


House Repairs

by SegaBarrett



Category: House M.D.
Genre: AU, F/M, Post Season 7, Pregnancy, Transplants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-25
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:44:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 32,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cuddy needs to find a way to fix her house and her House - Cameron is willing to help, but that might make things worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue 1: Phone Call

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, and don't make any money from this.

“Where do I even start?” Dr. Lisa Cuddy asked, staring at the huge pile of insurance forms that were spilled over the mahogany table in her sister, Julia’s, living room. “I mean, I don’t even know which of these I need to fill out first. I feel like I should know what to do with paperwork – it’s not like I don’t see enough of it, but…”

“You’re in shock,” Julia chimed in, and Cuddy felt that she sounded particularly patronizing. “You’re still trying to process what he did. It’s okay – I mean, you gave him a chance and he blew it, right?” Cuddy glared at her, sensing a slight note of what could actually be cheer in her voice.

 _What the hell is her problem?_ Cuddy thought angrily. After all, none of this would have happened if Julia hadn’t insisted upon playing matchmaker after her breakup with House. Then again, if she hadn’t decided to take that guy up on his offer… She hadn’t even liked him all that much, and that dinner certainly wasn’t worth having to move in with Julia while her house was repaired; certainly wasn’t worth all of this hassle and she didn’t even entirely know all of what had been damaged in the wreck. Not only that, but Julia had been trying to give her hotlines for battered women ever since the crash – which had been a week ago, now. Cuddy considered that lighting herself on fire would have probably been much less painful than this. _Thanks a lot, House,_ she thought, _just when I thought you couldn’t do anything more self-centered and destructive than you already had done, you pull this._ Against her will, however, she felt her heart begin to soften. _He told you he was hurt – you told him to show his anger. And he did._

“Just let it go, Julia,” Cuddy growled. “This isn’t about House.”

“Like hell it’s not about House!” Julia retorted. “Nobody else ran into your living room. He did. You need to stop living in denial. I know you thought there was good in him…”

“There is good in him,” Cuddy shot back, “And you’re speaking about the man I love, okay? So why don’t you back off for about five minutes if you’re not going to help me. A week of your harping has been more than enough.” She stood up and walked towards the staircase, wishing more than anything that she could be back in her home, her sanctuary, her… _Goddamnit House, I hate you._

As she made her way to the top of the stairs, she caught a glimpse of Rachel in one of the three bedrooms, her wide eyes peeping out eagerly and looking for her mother. 

“Hey,” Cuddy called softly, “How are you holding up?” At least Rachel had been at a sitter when the crash had happened, and she hadn’t had to observe the damage. Didn’t House ever think about anything or anyone other than himself? But she knew, this wasn’t some orchestrated manipulation. This had been rage, pure and simple. And in that aspect, she had to kind of appreciate it, if not ever justify it. 

“Fine,” Rachel murmured, the brush-off phrase for teenagers already seeming somewhat fitting coming from her. She tilted her head to the side and then asked, “When can we go home?”

“Not for a little while, honey,” Cuddy replied, “We need to fix the house.”

“What happened to it?”

“It broke,” Cuddy responded, a bit more curtly than she had intended.

“But Mom,” Rachel asked, “If we’re here, how is House going to find us?” Cuddy opened her mouth, but was thankfully saved from responding by the sound of her cell phone ringing. She didn’t recognize the ring tone, and she debated picking up for a moment before deciding she needed the distraction. She fished in her pocket and pulled it out, flipping it open and pressing it to her ear.

“Hello? Dr. Cuddy here.”

“Ah, hello!” the female voice on the other end of the phone line said in a deep Caribbean accent. “I am reaching Dr. Lisa Cuddy?”

“Yes, you are,” Cuddy replied, wondering what this could be about. Maybe she had ended up on some spam phone list or there was a bill she’d forgotten to pay. Alternatively, it could just be a prank call, from… somebody? 

“This is Dr. Raca Beyda from Barbuda Hospital in Antigua. I’m contacting you because you are listed… as emergency contact for a Gregory House?” the voice explained, and Cuddy swallowed hard. What was this woman going to tell her next? Was House dead? Gravely ill? How the hell had he ended up in Antigua – not that that was the most important part of things… Why was she even still listed as his emergency contact? She hadn’t even known that she was _ever_ listed as his emergency contact?

“Yes… I know Dr. House,” Cuddy replied quietly, and she bit her lip in a silent prayer that the next news would not be that House was dead. _God, anything but that. Even as furious as I am with him – not that._

“Dr. House collapsed and was taken to this hospital… He has medical needs that we believe can best be met if he were to be returned to the United States as quickly as possible,” Dr. Beyda continued, “Do you have any preference for a hospital for him to be transported to?” 

Against Cuddy’s will, she heard herself saying, “Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in Princeton, New Jersey… I’m Dean of Medicine there.” And I have a restraining order against him that will get him arrested as soon as he arrives in the airport. I better get rid of that. “And what do you mean… medical needs? You mean his leg?” She felt a rush of anger that, apparently, Antigua was not equipped to handle House’s disability, and was shipping him back all this way as if he were some sort of damaged goods to be returned.

“Oh, no, ma’am… Dr. Cuddy? You didn’t know? Dr. House has leukemia.”


	2. Prologue 2: Homecoming

_I hate airplanes. I hate them with all of my will. I’ve always hated them,_ Allison Cameron repeated as her plane began to spiral downward towards the Newark Airport. She jostled and shook and held on for dear life before finally being able to let out a sigh of relief as the plane stopped shaking and the announcement came over the PA system that _All passengers may now depart in an orderly fashion. Thank you for flying American Airlines._

Maybe it wasn’t airplanes that she hated. Maybe it was just the entire fact that she’d decided to come back to Princeton, now, over a year after she’d divorced her husband, Robert Chase. She didn’t know what she would find, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Maybe there was a chance.

 _He killed a man,_ Cameron’s internal voice reminded her, and if it had a face it would have been giving her the same morally outraged gander that she’d given House more than once. _Why do you think you can ever get over that?_

Yes, Chase had killed a man – a dictator, yes, but still a man, but he’d done it for good reasons, he had done it to save people and why should she destroy her own happiness on the account of a dictator who was dead anyway? There was no bringing him back – not that anyone would have actually wanted to – and Cameron was still alive, and she deserved the right to be happy.

_Just… keep telling yourself that. Maybe it will work long enough to get you to Chase. That is, if he hasn’t already found somebody else._

The thought was like a knife through her heart, and it stopped her as she walked down the aisle; a man behind her shoved her out of the way and broke her out of the thought as she gave up a small “umph!” of protest.

_This is a mistake._

But now she could go back and at least see Chase. At least find out if all hope was really lost for them.

_If nothing else, at least you get to see House again._

Where had that thought come from? She was over House. Definitely. She’d been over him for years. 

_I just miss him. He’s my boss. It’s normal. I’m here for Chase._

Cameron didn’t realize she had been moving until she flagged down the cab.

“Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital,” she told the driver, a young Indian man who had his radio on and who smiled at Cameron as she slid into the backseat.

“I’ll take you there,” he replied simply and didn’t talk for the rest of the ride. She wished he had, maybe then she’d stop having these conversations with herself. Questions that she wasn’t ready to answer.

Pulling into the hospital parking lot was like walking into a dream, one that wasn’t quite real and one that she wasn’t sure she could or should touch, lest it fade, lest it turn into dust and dissolve. 

She reached through the slot, paid the cabbie, heard herself saying, “Keep the change” but not remembering how much change that actually was; the look on the cabbie’s face indicated to her that it may have been a lot. She no longer cared, though, because the thing was that she was going to see Chase. 

She was going to see Chase.

She half-expected him to appear as soon as she walked through the door of the hospital, but she was relieved that she didn’t – she had to figure out what she was going to say, how she was ever going to start this. Maybe she should just turn around now and fly back home; she still could and this could have just all been chalked up to an aborted plan. 

Instead of seeing Chase, she was surprised to see Cuddy racing by her on the opposite side, her face contorted in worry, and she followed her instinctively even as her brain was thrashing her for doing so. _You don’t even work here anymore, the voice critiqued, why the hell are you bothering Cuddy?_

Instead, she heard her voice yelling, “Dr. Cuddy!” even as she ran to keep up with her former boss… or former boss of boss.

“Cameron!” Cuddy exclaimed, surprised, and stopped dead in her tracks. “What are you doing here?”

“I came back,” she said simply, and couldn’t add _to see Chase._

“Okay,” Cuddy replied, her voice a mix of tired and skeptical.

“What’s going on?” Cameron pressed, wanting to deal with someone else’s problems instead of her own, needing to be the helper, the fixer, even as she was sure that Cuddy was going to tell her she couldn’t do anything as she didn’t even work here anymore. “Can I help?” Cuddy’s lips pursed and she nodded.

“Yeah, you can help,” she replied, “Get yourself tested for bone marrow type.” Cameron looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

“Bone marrow type?” Cameron asked. Cuddy began walking swiftly again, with a purpose, her eyes straight ahead. “Who needs a bone marrow transplant?”

“House does,” Cuddy replied curtly, still walking, before she disappeared into a room, and Cameron couldn’t follow. She stopped in her tracks and she couldn’t quite comprehend the words. _House needs a bone marrow transplant?_

She could understand Cuddy’s worry, now – House had always been vital to her, almost like a part of her. Cuddy would never let anything happen to House, she would protect him endlessly, the way Cameron had always wanted to. _Cuddy must have already gotten tested,_ Cameron thought wryly, _there’s no way she’d let me have the satisfaction of helping House if she could help him instead._

But that was neither here nor there. She needed to go take the test, see if she could be a donor. She might spend her first day back in Princeton on a hospital bed. It was ironic. When she found Chase – if she found Chase – she would have to tell him so.

But at least now, even if Chase told her to go away, even if he laughed in her face, she would have a reason to stay.


	3. Prologue 3: Matchmaker

Cuddy had been staring at the wall in her office for at least ten minutes; Wilson had been counting.

“Cuddy?” he called again, for the second time, his voice soft and careful and still in a bit of shock as he reached up, cradling his broken right wrist out of habit – to make sure it was still there, maybe. He couldn’t believe the words his boss had told him – House. Leukemia. Antigua? 

None of them really made any more sense than the one before it, but Cuddy was dead serious. Was House, though? After all, he’d faked cancer before, so was this just a case of The Boy Who Cried Cancer? Wilson had to be sure. 

And then Wilson had run tests – House hadn’t said a word. Not to him, not to Cuddy; he just nodded his assent and he signed forms and he let them run the tests as if they were mechanical objects moving around him instead of people that loved and cared about him and were hurt by him. Wilson considered that maybe House was in as much shock as they were, and at that he was suddenly sure that this was not a prank, this was not a House test or a way to get Cuddy back by making her feel bad for him. This was real, and Wilson was terrified.

Cuddy was just as terrified. _Leukemia. House._ She could remember calling the police and lifting the restraining order, could remember the disapproving glances Julia had given her when she’d done so, but just barely. House didn’t have his job back at the hospital yet – but then again, she hadn’t quite ever really fired him, either – but now he was a patient. Their patient. She wished he would just speak to her, tell her why he’d been so furious as to destroy her house; but it was so irrelevant in the grand scheme, now. 

She hadn’t told her sister why she’d removed the restraining order, and her sister had harped on about how Cuddy had battered woman’s syndrome and she could give her some wonderful hotlines and really Cuddy could do so much better and why did she keep running back to House. It had taken every inch of Cuddy’s resolve to not scream at her, slap her, tear at her with her fingernails in some ridiculous catfight because she hadn’t needed that then, she had needed support but when did Julia ever give _that_? 

At least now, staring at Wilson, she could see her own eyes reflected back at her, the same mix of disbelief and fear and horror.

“I’m not a match,” Wilson said a second later, “Two-of-six…” He bit his lip and ran his left arm up his bandaged wrist again. He couldn’t help but think of House joking about Wilson being the universal donor, with type O blood, and House the universal receiver, with type AB blood. He wished that were true, now. At least he could help House as best he could as his oncologist… But the whole situation just seemed utterly wrong. 

Wilson thought of Amber, dying in his arms. That crime that he’d blamed House for, shattered House for. 

He thought of House’s words: “If you die, then I’ll be alone.”

House couldn’t die in his arms, too – no, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. 

~~~~~~~

Chase thought he’d seen a ghost. He’d been heading towards the diagnostics lounge, as Foreman – temporarily heading the department in House’s absence, which he still hadn’t gotten the complete story on – didn’t currently have a case and as such, there was nothing to do. He thought his mind must have been drifting when he saw a blonde bob walk by him, a blonde bob that reminded him of Cameron’s hair color. 

Not her hair color when he’d met her, of course – then it had been silky chestnut brown, dark and gentle and soft. Then she’d dyed it blonde, the same color as his but prettier, gentler, pulled back and tamed, almost unattainable. 

_It must just be someone with a similar… a patient, a…_

He felt a hand on his shoulder, one that was almost imperceptible. If he hadn’t been intoned that moment he’d have brushed it off – a patient trying to bug him or even just someone nudging him by accident while walking down the hall.

But he turned, and found himself looking into Cameron’s eyes. His beautiful Cameron, no, wait, his beautiful…

“Allison,” he gasped out, staring down at her. Her smile, wary and a bit nervous, spread across her face.

Cameron wanted to embrace Chase like nothing else she’d ever felt in her life. But she couldn’t risk the rejection. She needed to know he still cared. Behind the shock in his eyes, she saw that he did – but there could still be somebody else. Who else? She felt a flush of jealousness go through her at that. Probably Thirteen – she was gorgeous, younger than Cameron and would probably be more forgiving of what Chase had done. 

But that wasn’t the issue, not now. She couldn’t allow herself to be sidetracked by doubts, she needed to speak, now, make her mouth move. But she couldn’t speak, and Chase had to fill the silence again.

“What are you doing here?” His voice went up an octave. 

“I came back to see you,” Cameron whispered. “I don’t… I can’t stop thinking about you. I think leaving might… was a mistake. I need you.” Chase swallowed.

“I don’t know about this,” he admitted quietly. “We have to… figure this out. I have to figure this out. This is really… sudden.” 

“That’s okay,” Cameron replied, smiling too widely with false cheer and hope, and wanting desperately to change the subject. At least Chase hadn’t walked away. “Do you know what’s going on with House? I ran into Cuddy in the hall and she said…” She paused a moment, then blurted, “that he needs a bone marrow transplant. She got me to go get tested.” Chase tried to figure out which part of that surprised him the most, and he found he couldn’t compute any of it. The only thing he could think of was the next valid medical question.

“Do you match?” 

“Four-of-six,” Cameron replied sadly, taking a step back and leaning against the wall. “I don’t know how we’re going to find a match. He doesn’t have any siblings, his father’s deceased so that ship sailed… Maybe his mother could be a match? But she might be too old…” She paused and looked at Chase. “It’s too bad that House doesn’t have any kids, right? They’d be the most likely match.” Cameron paused after saying those words, and she stared at her ex-husband, who looked back at her with confusion. She shook her head, trying to shake the plan that was forming. It was a crazy plan. It would never, never work.


	4. Prologue 4: The Plan

“I think you should be checked for skull injuries. Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?” Cuddy asked, leaning back on her desk as she looked at Cameron, before staring past her to the closed door, which she half-believed House would walk through even though the man was lying on a hospital bed sleeping at this moment. “You can’t seriously think this plan is going to work.”

“But it could, I mean, look at this,” Cameron slapped a copy of Newsweek with her hand. “There’s a precedent.”

“Yes,” Cuddy retorted, “One with a lot of ethical gray-area, I thought you of all people would realize that! You are not seriously suggesting that House have a child for the sole purpose of _hopefully_ getting a donor match!”

“Well, what are his other chances? The registry? The chances of a match here are so much more likely,” Cameron argued. “The child could give a marrow transplant at six months old, and they’d never have to know. The risks are minimal and…”

“Excuse me, who are you and what have you done with Allison Cameron?” Cuddy snapped in disbelief. “And do you think House would ever go for this? I mean, seriously?”

“If we explained the risks and benefits…” Cameron cut in, “The fact that with a transplant we could… we could cure him, Cuddy, or at least close to it.” Cuddy looked back at Cameron and sighed, throwing up her hands.

“Okay then – who?” she asked. “Who would carry House’s child if this crazy plan actually got underway?” Cameron shrugged.

“I could do it,” she replied, trying to sound matter-of-fact. Cuddy’s jaw dropped. 

“You’re a complete idiot,” she blurted, before she could stop herself. “Even if House agreed, do you realize what you’d be signing up for? And what he’d be signing up for? You’re not seriously still carrying some misguided torch for him.” One hand moved to her hip and she narrowed her eyes. “This is some attempt to get Chase jealous, isn’t it?” she accused. 

“No, it isn’t!” Cameron shot back, throwing her hands up in part-real, part-feigned outrage. “This is an attempt to save House’s life. Why don’t we ask him and he can make his own decision?”

“Well, you’ll have some trouble with that,” Cuddy responded, “Given that he hasn’t talked at all to any of us since he arrived. I’m sure bursting in and announcing you want to have his baby will change that though, Dr. Cameron. Just go right along with that.” Cameron turned and walked towards the door, but for once Cuddy couldn’t quite figure the expression in her step. “You can propose it to him,” she said finally, with a sigh. “I can’t guarantee that he’ll agree. Or even that he _should_ agree. But House is always one for exploring every option so… go for it.” 

“Thank you,” Cameron said, but she didn’t turn around and still kept her eyes on the door. Cuddy wished she knew what the former fellow was thinking, but it was impossible. Could she seriously be considering this, or was this some power play to try to reinsert herself back into PPTH after her long absence? What did she really stand to gain from this? “Where is he?”

“In Oncology,” Cuddy replied. “Wilson’s looking after him. Oh and Cameron?” Cameron turned. 

“Yes?”

“You might want to renew your homeowner’s insurance.”

\-------

Cameron had seen House at lows before. The Tritter debacle came to mind, first – that haggard look he’d had as he’d tried desperately to fight against withdrawal and the fact that his friends were _letting_ him withdrawal and suffer until he took a deal he didn’t want to take. That look of betrayal in his eyes.

She’d seen him like this, more recently, when he’d had that mental breakdown - right before she had married Chase, exactly. He’d been driven to a mental hospital by Wilson while she was involved in what was supposed to be the happiest day of her life. Maybe it should have been an omen. Then, House’s eyes had been haunted, as if they were plagued with secrets that he couldn’t bring himself to reveal, or that he was afraid to reveal.

His eyes looked different now than either of those times, than any time. She’d seen House hurt, angry, bitter and suspiciously close to actually happy, but she’d never looked in his eyes and seen… nothing, before. 

He was awake, but he might as well have not been. He was lying back in the hospital bed and his eyes were focused on the ceiling. He hadn’t moved an inch when Cameron walked in and, as Cuddy had mentioned, hadn’t said a word.

“House?” Cameron called softly, walking around the side of the bed. “You in there?” She tried desperately to keep her voice playful, unconcerned, and with just a hint of playful mocking. “I came to see you ‘cause I might have… an idea. Something you can do about your… condition.” He didn’t budge, and she reached out and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. Other than a very slight flinch, there was no response. “House… I could…” She was losing her nerve now, now the plan seemed just as stupid as she’d thought it was when it had first entered her mind. But she couldn’t go back now. “If you had a child, they could be a bone marrow match, and you could have a transplant.” House’s eyes drifted over to her and looked at her. That was, at least, a good sign. “But you’d need someone to do that,” she continued, “And… I could do that. If you’d be okay with it. I mean… it’s a crazy idea, I know, but it’s one that just might work, and it’s more… reliable, I guess, then waiting on the registry for a match because it’s so unlikely and we don’t have a lot of time and I… don’t want you to die.” Cameron’s voice started to break. House’s blue eyes narrowed and a look of surprised went over his face, seemingly breaking into his daze.

“Would this be a turkey baster deal?” House inquired quietly, “Or would we actually fuck?” Cameron swallowed before she shrugged in surprise.

“Um,” she replied, “We could fuck… I have no problem with that.”


	5. Prologue 5: Easier Said Than Done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter has vaguely implications of previous non/dub-con. Nothing explicit, but if that triggers you, be warned.

Cameron tipped back her glass and ran her tongue along the edge, scooping the salt off the edge and taking a deep breath as she drank. She couldn’t quite look at House, who was sitting across from her in silence; she knew if she looked at him she’d make one of her concerned comments about how much worse, how much older, he looked than when she had seen him last. But that had been a long time ago – two years, it must have been.

The thoughts going through House’s mind weren’t any more settled. As much as he’d managed to shrug off the request with a snarky affirmative, he was really beginning to have his doubts. He hadn’t even really wanted to come back to PPTH, but the Antiguan hospital had insisted, and Cuddy was still in charge of his medical decisions if he was incapacitated, which he had been at the time.

So here he was, watching Cameron drink her third “perfect margarita”, one with a lot of tequila, and nursing a bottle of bourbon. Trying not to think about how utterly wrong this plan was, if it even actually worked. How bad would it be to have a kid simply to basically use for spare parts? That wouldn’t be a legacy he’d particularly wish upon anyone. It was like already being born into the scrap heap. 

Cameron finally lowered her drink enough to look over into House’s blue eyes; it let her swallow a moment and remind herself that this was House, who, if she didn’t exactly trust, she liked. How did that make any sense, though? Years ago, she’d been head-over-heels in love with the man, but it had been like a schoolgirl with a crush on a rock star – if that girl had actually ventured into the rock star’s bus and lay down with him, would she have trusted him? Probably not, and with good reason – such people tended to destroy the innocent.

Not that Cameron was innocent. Not anymore.

She tried not to think about the last time she’d had to get drunk to have sex. She looked at House and forced a smile. 

“I hope our food’s here soon,” she offered by way of awkward conversation. He actually grinned slightly at that.

“Yeah, it’ll be nice to get something that isn’t hospital food, even if it is just Chili’s.”

“Hey, you chose the place,” Cameron retorted with a real smile, this time. She tried to keep it from falling off her face.

_How much do you want Dr. House not to go to jail?_

Luckily, the arrival of the food snapped her out of that thought – that voice, crawling down her spine. All she needed was that and she would have the least erotic experience in her life. 

House had ordered some sort of hamburger with what appeared to be jalapeños on top of it, whereas Cameron had ordered a set of quesadillas that she was beginning to regret. She nibbled on the edge of one and kept looking at House, who eagerly dug into his burger. A moment later, she placed her quesadilla back on the plate and cleared her throat.

“So, how are we going to do this?” she asked in a low voice. 

“Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much…” House replied sarcastically, and Cameron rolled her eyes in response.

“I mean, just… You know. We haven’t done this before. And I don’t think either of us has… for this reason.” She let out a little shrill laugh. “I mean, it’s just all totally surreal.”

_What would you do to keep Dr. House from going to jail?_

“You’re telling me,” House retorted, “A week ago I was in Antigua, and now I’m back in the cold.” Cameron rolled her eyes again.

“I guess we’re just going to play this by ear, then? Any requests?” She tried to make it sound as if it was nothing, that it wouldn’t mean anything. Anything at all. It was just her helping House out.

_I don’t think he could survive there, do you…?_

“Let’s go,” Cameron said a few moments later, when House had finished his burger. She called for the check and assured the waitress that nothing was wrong with the quesadillas, she just wasn’t hungry.

A few moments later they were in a cab, heading for House’s apartment, and Cameron wasn’t sure that she could breathe. Why was she doing this? She couldn’t really go through with this.

Cameron reached over the cane between them to slowly place her hand on top of House’s, trying to acquaint herself with touching him – after so long, it was like something in a dream. She wanted this… or did she? She’d come back for Chase but here she was, ready to sleep with House. Was she going to tell Chase? He’d have to find out at least part of it eventually… if this worked. 

If she didn’t lose her nerve right here in the cab, with her stomach doing not somersaults but full handlebar routines complex enough to enter the Olympics. 

It seemed like they’d been sitting there into eternity before the cab stopped in front of House’s apartment and the driver announced in a loud voice, “Here you are, man!” before flicking the switch to the lights and seeming to temporarily blind both of them (Cameron started and House murmured a few choice expletives). 

House reached into his pocket and retrieved his wallet, pulling out a $20 and handing it to the driver before wordlessly popping open the door and stepping out, dragging his cane behind him. Cameron followed, and no one spoke until they were safely behind House’s locked door and standing in his living room.

“I want you to dye your hair back,” House said by way of greeting, and Cameron stared. 

“Why?” she asked, and he shook his head.

“Amber,” he murmured simply, and Cameron understood. 

“Okay, well… I assume you don’t have hair dye lying around?” It came off a little more flippant than she’d intended – but at least it gave her a reprieve for a few moments longer. 

~~~~~~

The next thing Cameron knew, they were cutting through the lawn around House’s apartment and heading for the corner drugstore to purchase brown hair dye. Cameron found herself giggling as House weaved slightly on the grass, and she prepared herself to grab him off the ground if necessary, though she wasn’t sure that she’d have the strength while intoxicated. She felt a rush that surprised her now, and House was grinning widely and drunkenly as Cameron began to wonder if they’d even know how to make their way back to the apartment.

Cameron had to sort through a whole aisle of products before she found the one she wanted. It wasn’t that easy when the labels were beginning to blur.

Somehow, they got back to the apartment and when they were inside again, Cameron walked into House’s bathroom with a grin. 

“Should I sit in the tub and just let you do your thing? Have you don’t this before?” she teased. House shook his head.

“You’re the first. If it turns out green, well, I can tell everyone I slept with the Incredible Hulk.”

Cameron laughed hysterically. 

House pulled on the pair of plastic gloves and squirted the dark brown dye, which looked black, into his hands. He reached forward and ran his fingers gently through Cameron’s hair, never having realized quite how soft it was before. He traced little lines and maybe even words and he wondered vaguely if he could write a measure on her head, maybe something like _House was here._ Because soon, he would be.

His hands knotted in her hair again as he rinsed it, and wrung it out as well he could because he’d never bothered to invest in a blowdryer – Cameron looked a little like a combination of a drowned rat and a model on Baywatch.

“Well, since we’re here already, do you want out of that wet shirt?” he asked, leering slightly. To her surprise, Cameron laughed again.

“What a great pick-up line… Well, sure… But I’ll regret this in the morning if you missed a huge spot,” she teased, and reached down to pull off her shirt, tossing it into the corner of House’s bathroom. “Wouldn’t you rather the bedroom?” She gestured. “I mean, your leg.” House considered this a moment; he was intoxicated to the point that although his leg hadn’t stopped hurting, it wasn’t a quite present thought in his mind.

“Sure,” he replied and limped over to the bedroom, with Cameron following and wishing she hadn’t been quite so forward; it was a little weird to be walking around House’s apartment in just her black lace bra. 

House sat on his bed and Cameron next to him.

“You sure you want to do this?” he asked quietly. She nodded.

“It’s now or never,” she replied. 

“This is crazy.”

“Shut up.” Cameron turned and pressed her lips to his, leaning against him and trailing her fingertips down his shirt to unbutton his pants, reaching inside and trying to go on autopilot because this was just too weird to be sleeping with House.  
But that hadn’t stopped her so far. 

House’s hands were on her shoulders now, above her breasts, and without letting himself think about how utterly wrong this was, he reached around and unsnapped her bra strap, smiling nervously as it fell to her knees. She kicked it on the bed and smiled back at him, nodding, and he leaned in, gently nipping at a spot above her left breast.

“Oh, God, House,” Cameron groaned out, trying not to think of how weird it was that she was trying to get pregnant by someone who she was still calling by his last name. She wished she could just shut off her brain, it was all just too… 

Now House’s mouth was on her nipple and finally her brain really was shutting off and she couldn’t really think anything other than begs and pleads, some of which were successfully coming out of her mouth. 

Somehow her pants ended up in the corner of House’s room and she wasn’t entirely sure how. Somehow she moved to let House lay on his side while she swallowed hard and brought herself down on him, closing her eyes as she felt him inside her and digging her nails into his back. She could hear him groan out, but mostly he was silent – she filed this away with curiosity as she had thought House would have said something but he just laid there and thrust, not disinterested but seemingly as caught up in the surreal contours of this scene they’d created as she was. She felt bad for being the one to moan, to call his name when she came, because she worried it’d break the mood, destroy everything… but somehow it didn’t. 

Somehow just as quickly as it had begun, it was over and she was lying across him in a heap, closing her eyes and drifting off. She knew that she’d wake up with a hangover and dark brown hair… and maybe regrets… and maybe the beginnings of a very successful plan.


	6. Week One: The Morning After

There were few stranger places Allison Cameron had awoken than under the arm of Dr. House. Even when she’d wanted this more than anything else in the world, she had never been able to quite picture it. House did seem, after all, the kind of guy to run off in the night – okay, perhaps not run, but limp away.

Cameron supposed that the reason he hadn’t was because this was his own home. There would be nowhere to escape to.  
She looked over him and if she hadn’t heard the words from Cuddy, she wouldn’t believe that he was really sick. She still wanted to believe that maybe it was just a mistake, or maybe another weird plot of House’s, faking cancer yet again and she’d somehow gotten drawn into it. She decided that she would much rather have been had yet again than have to cling to this as a reasonable chance for House’s survival.

House’s eyes were shut tightly, and he was sleeping in an awkward position. She moved slowly, not wanting to wake him – wondering just how much sleep he ever actually got, considering his leg. She cursed herself, wishing this desire to just… wrap her arms around House and protect him from the world would just go the way that it needed to. Why had she come back for Chase but found herself sleeping with House – noble reasons or not?

“House,” Cameron whispered, nudging him gently. He didn’t budge, and she worried for a moment that somehow, sleeping with her had either been so good or so bad that it had somehow killed him. But a few moments later she saw one blue eye slowly slip open, and then the other.

“Cameron?” House mumbled. 

“Hey. How are you holding up?” Cameron inquired. She didn’t know what to do. Should she cuddle him, make sure he’s okay, ask for another go around, try and slip out now without saying another word? What was the protocol for sleeping with your – albeit former – boss? 

“Good,” House mumbled again. “Do we have to be anywhere?”

“No,” Cameron replied, remembering that first of all, it was now a Saturday, and second of all… well, she had no idea if House was even coming back to work at PPTH, and she didn’t really feel it was immediately appropriate to ask. 

“Then I’m going back to sleep,” House said, stealing more of the blanket. 

“Me too,” Cameron echoed quietly, and curled back up to House. This was certainly weird. This really wasn’t normal.

But for right now, for this second at least… This was somehow okay. 

~~~~

“House… and Cameron?” Wilson raised an eyebrow and tried not to sound as jealous as he felt. “And you told Cameron this idea was absolutely insane, right?”

“Yes, I did… and she insisted on it anyway. And House… agreed. I don’t know why. He’s as crazy as she is,” Cuddy replied, shaking her head. 

“She knows the chances of a match are still less than a sibling match, and that even that isn’t certain?” Wilson pressed.

“Yes, she does,” Cuddy said again. She shrugged and slammed the drawer of her desk shut, trying to keep her emotions under control. All of this, at once, was just too much. And by the end of this week, work was supposed to begin with her house repairs. She didn’t need all of this right now… Or maybe she did. Maybe each individual crisis was a welcome escape from the mounting multitude of other crises. 

“But she’s choosing to go with this ridiculous plan anyway, and if she does get pregnant she ends up having House’s child and… what? Does she think House, with or without leukemia, is really up to raising a child?” 

“Don’t rant at me, Wilson,” Cuddy retorted. “I know it’s crazy. Cameron probably knows it’s crazy, too. But I guess she just wants hope. She loves him… And don’t you?” Wilson looked at her, unsure of what to say. What exactly did she mean? Love as in, as a friend – which he certainly did – or love in a more… romantic sense?

Which he was certain he might.

“So do you,” Wilson said instead. He didn’t want to go there, not now – not when House’s life hung so precariously in the balance. He wanted to see House, wanted to smile at him and assure him that everything would be okay, even if he didn’t believe those words himself. Even if he was as utterly lost as he had been ever since House had run off after driving his car into Cuddy’s living room; even if he still kept walking past House’s empty office and wishing he’d hear the gentle tap of a cane in there.

“I did,” Cuddy replied simply. She walked out of the room before he could ask her if she still did.

~~~~

“Cameron’s back,” Chase blurted out as he looked up from his chair at Foreman, who was again in the boss’ spot, seemingly kind of like a child playing House – literally. 

“She is?” Thirteen inquired, raising an eyebrow. “Why?”

“For me, apparently.”

“Can we get back to the case?” Foreman asked impatiently. “Twenty-six year old female, has had trouble walking and talking… No one can diagnose her.” He gestured to the white board. “Chase, do you have something to add, or should we keep discussing your old girlfriend?”

“Ex-wife,” Chase corrected, a flush of anger flying to his cheek. “And I wasn’t hogging the conversation, I was just saying…” He threw his hand up. “Auto-immune.”

“Seems probable,” Foreman replied, and wrote “auto-immune?” on the whiteboard. 

“Could be a parasite,” Taub suggested. He looked over at Chase. “Is she back for you, or for House?”

“Given that House isn’t here and is in some… somewhere, probably hiding out in Mexico, I’d say not,” Chase retorted.

“Actually, House is back,” Foreman corrected. “He was in the hospital a few days last week. Surprised you didn’t notice, since your nose is usually affixed to his, shall we say, posterior…”

“Oh, shove it, Foreman,” Chase snapped, standing up. 

“What a proactive step, Dr. Chase,” Foreman said. “Get her started on meds for the parasites.”


	7. Week Two: Where Do We Go From Here?

By the next week, Cuddy and Wilson had stopped discussing Cameron, but not stopped discussing House. They worried about him constantly, and even when he was not the direct subject of conversation, all roads appeared to lead back to him as every story, every reminiscence, every concern seemed tinged with his influence.

Cuddy considered, as she played her fingers over the touch tone buttons of her cordless phone, whether she ought to maybe consider asking him to come back to work. It was a bad idea, the worst – and yet maybe a good one. She couldn’t decide. Things with House had so often been gray and they had turned grayer. She could not hate him as she wanted to, the necessary hate when a relationship turns toxic.

She pushed the thought to the back of her mind as she dialed another construction company, trying to get the best estimate for the best work. Maybe it didn’t matter – she made enough as Dean to cover pretty much any price they could ask, but it was the principle of the thing – she hadn’t asked to have her crazy ex-boyfriend drive into her home, it wasn’t as if this was voluntary remodeling on her part. 

Maybe she should make the most of it, she considered – maybe this would be the time to invest in a nice new patio or nicer windows (or maybe much smaller windows so that people cannot easily look into the house). Maybe this would be a blessing in disguise.

She doubted it.

~~~~~

Chase tried to get a hold of Cameron. He called her old cell phone number, but it had been disconnected and the new owner appeared to be a man who spoke only Pashtu and was getting tired of Chase calling him. He hadn’t seen her again at the hospital, and he couldn’t help but think that maybe she had thought better of her idea and decided to go back to… wherever she had come from. 

Even when he tried to shrug it off, he couldn’t stop his brain from cycling, bringing her back to the forefront even when he had no desire for her to be there. He was thinking about Thirteen now, so often, and he had decided that he could be happy with her, he really could. He truly could, if Cameron would get out of his head for good. But every smile or touch from Remy reminded him of smiles and touches from Cameron. He was lost. 

Thirteen was quickly getting irritated with the whole thing. At the moment, Chase was trying to talk with her, but was looking past her at the wall and thinking of Cameron.

“Foreman doesn’t have to be such an ass,” she continued, but underneath the comment was the implication that Chase didn’t have to be one, either. He hadn’t looked directly at her the entire conversation, and she was tempted to put her foot down and tell him that if he wasn’t going to pay attention, then what was the point of doing this? If she had wanted closed off and impossible to reach, she could have stayed with Foreman. At least he wouldn’t be comparing her to Cameron.

~~~~~

House didn’t talk to Cameron for that week, either. The whole thing seemed like a mistake now – how could he have been so stupid? It was another idealistic Cameron plot, one that would never work. There was no way he would ask her to try again – hell, he hadn’t even asked her in the first place, only acquiesced. She could keep her hare-brained schemes to herself from now on; now was no time for false hope. He needed to accept the inevitable, the bad news that maybe wasn’t actually all that bad. He would be done. 

He could just be done with all of it – with the lingering reminders of how wrong everything had gone with Cuddy. Maybe it was actually better this way; he wouldn’t have to deal with wasting away and being a burden on her. He would have never come back if he had had a choice; he would have stayed in Antigua and spent his final days sipping tequila and dancing with half-naked girls, but they had shipped him back like a defective product. 

But what if it did work? What if Cameron’s crazy idealistic scheme worked halfway or part-way? What if the universe finally decided things in his favor for once in his life?

He didn’t know what he would do then – it was, if anything, far scarier than it not working and him being able to write it off as a loss and say “sayonara” to the whole damn cruel world. What did he do if it worked? If Cameron had this kid, was he supposed to take care of it? Or was he supposed to just say “thanks”, extract the bone marrow, and then continue on his way? Was he supposed to stay with Cameron out of gratitude? With her kid out of obligation? Was he supposed to just take the gift she was giving him and just leave?

Or should he just cut his losses now, leave in the night, and go somewhere else to die? Maybe Florida would be nice, or even just New York – somewhere with a lot of hookers and somewhere where nobody knew his name, where nobody expected him to come running back and solve a case when he thought he had finally gotten away from – from – from the only thing he really loved in his life. It was too damn twisted and complicated and hellish to understand, and it was only going to get harder if Cameron succeeded.

He didn’t want her to succeed. He wanted her to see that the world was the crapsack place he had spent all those years telling her it was. He wanted to run off and die happy. Or die miserable. Or just die. Was that so much to ask?  
House twiddled the Vicodin bottle between his fingers and sighed. _Life shouldn’t be this difficult, but it is. Dying shouldn’t be this difficult – but it’s harder._


	8. Week Three: News

The next week, Cuddy considering calling the man who she had been on the… well, she couldn’t exactly call it a date, or could she? On the whatever it had been exactly when House had driven his car into the living room.  
But that was no real way to begin a conversation.

“Hello? Remember me? My ex may have instilled PTSD in you… Sorry.”

No, it was safe to say that her love life was flatlined for the foreseeable future, but maybe that was okay. An ex with leukemia who had also left a hole in her living room was more than enough to deal with right now. 

Instead, she filled her days with hospital work, trying not to wonder when and if House would be back to continue his treatment. It was House, after all, and there was no way to make the man do anything that he didn’t want to do. Not to mention, if Cuddy asked him, he would just be more likely to resist.

So she just had to keep quiet, even if it was driving her up the wall – and it was. Was House just so selfish that he didn’t care what his behavior did to other people? Was he really just the child who broke all the other kids’ toys and then walked off like it was nothing? 

She didn’t believe that, ever, and she still didn’t, even as this all rained down on her like a meteorite exploding in mid-air.   
But what about this Cameron plan, now? She was fidgeting at not being able to question House directly, but what kind of answer could she even get out of him that wouldn’t be full of sarcasm and bite? The only thing she could do would be to let House come to her, and let the rest of it sort itself out.

Cuddy reached over and touched the phone, ran two fingers over the sleekness of it. She could call House, she really could, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

~~~~~~

Cameron made her way to the drug store. Maybe it was time to check – or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it had all been a stupid idea, a way to fill her little fantasies from before, and one that hadn’t worked. She wasn’t the same person she had been when she couldn’t stop mooning over House, and there was nothing that she could do to change that, least of all sleeping with him.  
But she couldn’t deny the fact that she had. 

And now she needed to figure out if, what was the phrase, it took? Or something… 

She reached out on the rack and looked; there were about five competing brands. Was one better than another? They all did the same thing, didn’t they? Was she cutting corners… oh, hell, she could do a blood test herself given that she was a doctor, this was just seeing if she would have any need to go that route.

Then why was she so damn nervous? It was just a stupid little stick that wouldn’t even necessarily give the right answer.   
She looked around, as if someone who knew her would just happen to be walking around the same pharmacy and would have nothing better to do than to spy on her. Then again, considering House, who knew?

She let herself wondering about House’s new life, whatever it had become in the year since she had left. Had he hired new fellows she hadn’t seen? 

It didn’t seem likely; House was a creature of habit. He hadn’t ever replaced Kutner – then again, he’d only intended two and gotten permission for three, she remembered that. The number had evened itself out. 

Then everything had happened with Chase and the dictator and she had left, too, the number had gone down by another.

Now, she was back – tipping the scales, if you put too much weight on a see-saw, someone goes flying.

Would it be her?

She walked up to the counter, conspiratorially shoved the test down and paid for it, imagining herself hidden in a trenchcoat and wearing a mask instead of in the nice blouse and skirt that she was donning. She held her breath until the transaction was complete, feeling that the cashier was going to say something… anything… about what she’d bought and then she would snap and it’d be a big scene.

Then she drove home. Drove home and took the test – _not one you can pass or fail,_ her mind mockingly teased, _remember now, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s whether you’ve reached fertilization_ – and then blinked at it.

Really, she couldn’t remember what the signs meant, anymore – maybe they needed some kind of vocal box in these sticks that would just yell the answer at you.

But there was an answer, and she stood waiting for a few moments before she threw it down and swallowed, crossing her arms and wondering what in the fuck she was going to tell House.

~~~~~

“My dear Wilson, what brings you here?” House inquired as he peeked out through the door of his apartment.

“Uh, I can’t show concern about my best friend who has leukemia?” Wilson retorted. “Has that gone out of vogue nowadays?”

“No,” House responded, sticking out his cane. “But I get the feeling that you don’t want to talk about the fact that I have leukemia. You want to talk about the fact that Cameron wants me to knock her up.”

“Not quite so harshly as all that, but maybe,” Wilson replied, sighing. “Please tell me you haven’t taken her up on the offer.”

“I can’t,” House said simply, opening his door a little wider. Wilson stepped in, made his way to the couch, and sat down as House joined him. 

“Oh, well, thank you, that’s a load off my back,” Wilson told him, letting out a breath.

“No,” House replied with a smirk. “I can’t tell you that I haven’t taken her up on her offer, because I have.” Wilson stared at him, slackjawed and wide-eyed.

“Really, House? You slept with Cameron?”

“Years ago you would have been applauding this.”

Years ago, Wilson would have. But times had changed… and this was a bad idea, everything about it. He could see disaster heading straight towards them, faster than a car going 200 miles an hour on a salted race track.


	9. Week Four: Something More

The phone rang shrilly, shouted almost, at House as it broke him out of his sleep. He couldn’t recall, a moment later, what exactly he had been dreaming about, but he could remember hands on his shoulders pressing him down and something next to his ear. On further recollection, it had been some kind of lizard, or a demon.

_Weird._

He needed to stop watching movies on the Sci-Fi network before going to bed.

Shaking those thoughts from his head, he rose and snatched up the phone, pressing the “Call” button before placing it to his ear.

“Hello. Speak. It’s House.”

There was a long pause, and House nearly hung up the phone – it must have been a wrong number or maybe a bill collector, he considered, because he didn’t recognize the number. 

Just as his finger hovered over the “End” button, however, he heard a rasping voice pipe up, “It’s Cameron.”

“…Okay… do you want a prize?” House retorted, trying to keep his own discomfort about what they had done out of his voice. Did she regret it? Or … well, worse or better, did she want to do it again? What did she expect? Men never called women to pore over the intricacies of sex, now did they? 

They just took it for what it was. Did the sensible thing.

“I’m pregnant.”

House was speechless, for one of the few times in his life. Sure, it had been her plan all along, but it had been a stupid plan, one he had regretted after going along with it. Why had he gone along with it, after all? Was he really that lonely that he’d sleep with one of his former fellows? He was above that, wasn’t he?

Apparently not. And now, it seemed, there was at least the chance of a combined House/Cameron child unleashed upon the world, and that… was terrifying. 

He was about to suggest that she run off somewhere and nip this in the bud, hell, he’d even pay, when Cameron continued, “So the plan can work.”

“I…” House began. “Cameron, this plan – no offense, but it’s moronic. Even if this all works out and you don’t… fall down a flight of stairs or get kidnapped by some crazy woman who wants a baby, both of which are strong possibilities, how do we even know whether this kid’s going to have the right bone marrow type? This is like… breeding a kid for spare parts. Do you really want to be the one to tell them?”

“He’s not for spare parts!” Cameron barked into his ear. “Regardless of whether or not this ‘works’, I want this baby! Jeez, House – and if you do die, let’s be honest, yeah this whole thing is a long shot so if you do die, don’t you want to live on?”

“No,” House fired back without a thought. No, he didn’t want a kid, who was really innocent of this whole thing, to grow up in yet another screwed-up family dynamic. 

“Yeah, you wouldn’t,” Cameron goaded, “You’re so bitter at the whole entire world you’d rather fade away. In your eyes, the world’s destined to basically end anyway, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much.”

“Why’d you even agree if you’re just going to be an asshole about it?” Cameron snapped at him. He could hear a rustling in the background but couldn’t tell whether it was papers, or maybe an agenda book – doctor’s appointments? Or maybe a script? Maybe it was all a test, one he’d gladly failed. 

“I wanted a free piece of ass.”

He expected Cameron to hang up the phone, or scream and call him an asshole again, tell him she was done with him. 

Instead, she just gave a simple, shrill laugh.

“Well, you have nine months to come around. Get used to it. Try not to die in the meantime.”

Then, she hung up.

House immediately dialed Wilson’s number. 

“Remind me never to let Cameron try and save my life again.” 

“What happened? Did she not call the next day? Did she not respect you in the morning?” Wilson teased.

“She’s pregnant,” House blurted. 

“…Wow.”

“Yeah, what do you say to that?”

“I never knew Cameron was so fertile,” Wilson said, the smirk evident in his voice.

“You’re horrible, Wilson. A horrible person.”

“Okay, okay, what are you going to do?” House paused.

“I have no damn clue.”

***

“Well, at least my homeowner’s insurance is covering some of this,” Cuddy declared as she walked into her sister’s living room and sat down in a big, red easy chair that felt way too awkward and far too much… not her house.

“Hmm… Too bad you can’t get a refund on the time you wasted on him,” Julia retorted, looking up from the copy of The Da Vinci Code she was reading.

“Are you ever going to stop making smart remarks, or am I going to strange you before I head back to my house?”  
Julia shrugged.

“Just because you don’t like to hear the truth, Lisa, doesn’t mean I’m going to stop telling you it. That’s what sisters do.”

“No, apparently they kick people when they’re down,” Cuddy snarled. “You know how much stress I’m under. Can’t you just give it a rest for about ten minutes? I know that this whole thing with House was a mistake – it’s not as if I’m currently warbling ‘He Hit Me (And It Felt Like a Kiss)’.”

“You might as well be. You need to accept that House is bad news, despite whatever idea you have to fix him, now or ever.”  
Cuddy placed her hands on her neck and groaned. 

“Will you just stop? I don’t want your opinion. I’ve never wanted your opinion on my love life. I just really, really do not want to hear it. I don’t tell you how to live your life, Julia, so you really need to quit telling me how to live mine.”

Even as the walls were set to be built, they were crumbling down. Then again, Cuddy was used to this by now. This was what life was like around House. She needed something more. But what?


	10. Week Five: Wheels Keep Turning

One week passed into the next, and House was still left with no real idea of what to do. He could suggest, very firmly suggest, that Cameron get rid of it – maybe that would work. And someone could use the stem cells for science, to create a cure for something. Paralyzed people could walk again.

Then again, he would be dead by the time that happened, so what did he really care?

Or, better yet, he could just let Cameron do what she was going to do. Trying to talk sense to her had proven fruitless when he was her boss, what made him think it would be any more effective when she was his one-night-stand and now, (the thought made him wince) the father of her child?

House didn’t do well with fathers; at least, he hadn’t done well with his own (if he were even counting John House as his father, that was), and as far as he was aware, dysfunction had a clear tendency to be repeated ad nauseum throughout families. Why subject some kid to that? Sure, Cameron would probably be a halfway decent parent, but he didn’t want to touch the subject with a ten-foot pole. 

So, House decided as he lay back on his bed, staring out at the ceiling and considering, quite calmly, the fact that he would soon be dead (it was less anxiety to thing about that rather than the idea that there would be some parasite bearing his face), he decided he was not going to call Cameron.

But he might want to check his phone to see if she had called him again. 

He fished out his phone and hit the “recent calls” button. He wasn’t surprised to see that Wilson was there, three times in fact, and only slightly less surprised to see calls from both Cameron and Cuddy. _Cuddy._

He didn’t want to go there.

He still loved her. Would always love her, maybe, even if “always” didn’t have all that long to go. Then again, if “always” was only a couple of months to a year, maybe that was far less pathetic than spending the next twenty years thinking about the one who’d gotten away. 

After all, what good was any of it if he let it turn into another Stacy situation? Where he sat on his hands, refusing to connect, thinking about what could have been? Listening to Wilson tell him to move on already as he shook his head?

Maybe it had been better that he had smashed through every hope of reconciliation with Cuddy, shattered every last bit of false hope. 

With reluctance, he hit the button to listen to his voicemail.

“House, it’s Wilson. Well, you already knew that. Call me back.”

“House, really. It’s… oh, you already know who it is. Call me back.”

“I’m starting to really want to give up on you. Call. Me. Back. Needless to say, this is Wilson.”

“Hey House, this is Cuddy. We need to speak about your… treatment. And everything.”

“House, it’s Cameron. Just calling to see how you are. And where your head is at about all of this. I know it’s all pretty sudden, trust me, it’s sudden for me, too…”

House hit the “7” button. 

“Message deleted.”

****

Cameron had thought up a million ways that she could break the news to Chase, but none of them seemed any better than the one before it. She would have to figure out _something_ to tell him, though, because he was standing in her apartment, on the stoop. She half-expected him to be holding flowers. Apology flowers. “Sorry I killed a man” flowers.

She supposed she could return the favor with “Sorry I’m pregnant by House” flowers. 

“Hi, Chase,” she murmured, opening her door further. “Come in.”

When he was all the way in the door and it had shut, he put his hands at his sides and side.

“Listen, Allison… I really need to talk to you.”

“Okay?” Cameron inquired. Maybe Chase would lead off with something so awful that her own comparison would seem miniscule in retrospect. She could always hope. Maybe he had slept with House, too – she curled up her nose at the unwanted mental image. That was one experience she really did not want to find out they had in common.

“I’ve been… thinking about you… your coming back. And I don’t… I want to try. If we can try. I just don’t know. Maybe it’s been too long but I’m having… all kinds of feelings and… ugh, Allison, you know I don’t really like talking about this sort of thing. But I want to give it a go if…”

That hadn’t been what she had wanted to hear. Not at all. She was suffering until she cut him off and simply blurted it out.

“I’m pregnant. By House.”

Cameron was pretty sure that she had actually literally heard a pin drop. Chase said nothing. She could say nothing else. 

All she could follow it with was, “We aren’t… together,” like that made it any better. 

She had thought Chase would turn and walk away, stalk off and never speak to her again, and that was better and worse than what he did, which was just stare, as if he was trying to look at something that always seemed to be just in the corner of his eye.  
He moved, like he was floating, until he sat down on Cameron’s bed. His head cocked slightly to the side, and he opened his eyes, then closed them. He did this a few times. 

Cameron was finally able to speak.

“To try for a match. A bone marrow match.”

Chase looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“I planned it. But I didn’t plan it. I didn’t… I came back for you, Chase.”

That was when he rose off the bed and walked towards the door.

“Where are you going?” she called, but all she heard was the door slam. She could tell that wherever he was going, he must not have even taken a second to look back.


	11. Week Six: Split Asunder

Chase lay down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying, with all his will, to ignore the fact that his alarm had just gone off. Another day, another case. Cuddy, in her infinite wisdom, had decided to reinstate House, as of three days ago.

He had written his resignation letter over and over in his head, but couldn’t really commit it to paper. Maybe he was a masochist, maybe that was it. Maybe some deep-seated, fucked-up part of him enjoyed House tormenting him, leaving him, letting him gain the vaguest foothold of responsibility and then ripping it away.  
It had to be that.

He walked into the bathroom, stripped, and stepped into the shower, trying not to be waylaid by thoughts of Cameron’s return. Instead he thought of Thirteen – Remy – and her slim body, her “come hither” lips, the way she’d fought him that night that he’d caught her treating her former cell mate. Thirteen was dangerous, the anti-Cameron, dark and feisty where Cameron had been an irritating pillar of morality.

_Yes, that’s right, think of Thirteen._

He let his hands wander downward, as if to imprint the message further, that it wasn’t Cameron he wanted and that if Cameron wanted to go fuck off with House, get pregnant by House, then what the hell did he care? She didn’t even factor in, anymore. 

The fingers interlaced over one another, pumped and prodded, stroked and manhandled. Chase would forget; he wouldn’t remember. He’d know. He’d remember all the mistakes and wrong steps and remind himself that those were all the reasons why he and Cameron didn’t belong together, had never belonged together.

He and Thirteen didn’t belong together, either, not in a “true love” kind of sense. But for a time, for a distraction, until he forgot about Cameron and she forgot she was dying, maybe that was the answer. Maybe life was just a serious of distractions and it was all a matter of figuring out what the better, more worthwhile ones were. 

He remembered House punching him in the face during the whole horrid Tritter debacle. He remembered every mocking comment, every time the knife was dug in that much deeper. He thought of how House had known Chase’s father was dying when Chase himself didn’t even know.  
He stroked harder. He had to wash it away, every last vestige of wanting to hang on to Cameron.

How Cameron had forgiven House’s every fault, even applauded it as vulnerability but couldn’t forgive fault in Chase, couldn’t give him another chance. Blamed House but still loved him, didn’t blame Chase but left him.

Chase bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed. He stroked one last time, felt the damn burst, felt himself give way. He tried to picture a new beginning as the mix of soap and come and sweat whirled around in his drain.

But he knew he’d only be fooling himself.

***

The case this week was some fifteen-year-old prostitute with what looked like skin cancer but apparently wasn’t. If Cameron had been on the case, she’d have taken some time to put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and cry with her.

But Cameron wasn’t on the case. 

A whole lot of compassion wasn’t forthcoming from any of the other doctors on the case, either. Foreman had on the face he usually did regarding the down-and-outs, a kind of forced neutrality which seemed to cover a deep layer of resentment. Taub just seemed to want to get the whole thing over with. Thirteen was vaguely sympathetic but, as usual, guarded, and House had just used his third “Pretty Woman” joke.

Chase was probably going to stab himself in the face by the end of the day. 

He ran the tests with a forced nonchalance, gave a few suggestions in the differential that House didn’t mock entirely, and kept his comments to himself for the most part. The more focused he was on the case, the less his thoughts would run to Cameron and how the whole thing was fucked beyond belief.

At least House hadn’t mentioned it, yet, which led Chase to wonder if he actually didn’t know yet, somehow, or if the whole situation made him even more uncomfortable than it made Chase.

Either way, Chase didn’t particularly care. He just wanted to do his job, save the girl and go home. Drowning his sorrows in alcohol was, as usual, out, but he could always turn on a mindless comedy (no romantic comedies, not that he ever watched them anyway) and sleep to the dim light of the TV screen. Alternatively, he could dig up some fairly depraved internet porn and try to undo any of the karmic goodwill he might have inherited during his time in the seminary.

That idea worked, too.

Unfortunately for Chase, the patient – Diana Rodriguez, her name was, apparently dubbed “Lady Di” by a couple “friends” who were probably fellow prostitutes – decided that of all the doctors to unburden her heart on, he should be the one.

And so he spent the better part of the evening listening to her tale. 

It left him feeling guilty for being so angry at Cameron. Not guilty enough to forgive her, or to forgive House.

But guilty enough to make him want to stop dwelling on it.

Maybe he would just forget, and the forgiveness could come later. 

He hoped so. It was like a rock in his heart that he was carrying around, and it was weighing him down. Or a burning ember, maybe. Some part of a volcano that broke off. The volcano named Dr. House, that crashed into and erupted over everything in its path.

Diana Rodriguez looked up at him with a sad smile.

“You look like you’ve got your secrets, too,” she said.

She was the first person to see right through him in all of this. Chase sighed.

“It’s a part of being human,” he said simply. “I need to draw some more blood, now.”


	12. Week Seven: Pieces

In the course of a half a sandwich from Wawa and an order of Jalapeno poppers, Cameron decided in favor of calling House ten times and decided against it six and a half times.

She figured that majority ruled.

If she was going to go through with this – and now that it was seven weeks in, she figured she ought to be – she needed to at least know where he stood. Whether or not he’d be willing to be on board at all.

Not to mention, what exactly she was going to do if he weren’t on board.

Cameron had always wanted children, after all. Not in the same way that she’d seen Cuddy want them, with a kind of sense of something having passed her by in the wind of her success at her career, having to abandon one life to obsess over another, but she had wanted them nonetheless.

This hadn’t been how she’s pictured it all those years, however. First, with her husband. She had held on to the belief that somehow, she could keep him alive through the idea of passing on his DNA to a child, albeit one with a rather unusual method of conception.

Then, there had been Chase. She had wanted a life with him, but she hadn’t been able to leave the old one behind; not without a push. That risk hadn’t really paid off, had it? 

Or maybe it had. She held the cell phone in her hands, turned it over, even took out the battery and put it back in to better stall for time.

Did she love House? 

It was one of those big questions. A keynote question. Too hard a question, and one she probably should have asked before coming up with this ridiculous plan, before sleeping with the man.

She used to know, after all, didn’t she?

She used to know.

But back then she had known a lot of things. Or thought she knew.

She let herself dial the number. He answered on the third ring.

“Cameron,” was how he answered, and it was all that was said for a long while. She thought that he had hung up, or maybe lost the connection. Or maybe he was hoping that she would hang up, that this would all go away – this plan, the leukemia, what he’d done to Cuddy, everything.

She didn’t know.

There was a lot she didn’t know these days.

“I want to see you,” she breathed, blurted into the phone before she could think better of it.

There was a longer pause. She was again afraid that he’d hung up, that he couldn’t be bothered to hear this. After all, why would a dying man want to hear this?  
Another dying man she’d fallen in love with.

“When?” he asked instead, but she could tell the real question was “why?”

“Tonight. At eight. We need to talk.”

He hung up, then, and she wasn’t sure whether that signaled agreement, or that he was just done with the whole thing. 

She wasn’t sure of anything that had to do with House. 

***

When House appeared at her door, she couldn’t help but take stock. He looked so pale, so… some kind of dead inside. It shook her to the core. 

There was a buried hope, a desperate hope inside her that wanted to believe that she – and maybe this child – could relight something inside of him that had been snuffed out long ago, embers that were only vaguely smoldering these days.

She just had to figure out the right words. The right words in a perfect order. An impossible Rubix cube.

A puzzle House would enjoy.

But there weren’t the right words. Not really. Only the right actions.

She lifted her hand to his cheek and cupped it, stared at him and said something – even if she wasn’t quite sure what, with her eyes. Her chin tilted up and she pressed their lips together, her mind screaming after her that she would be rebuffed, no doubt be rebuffed.

But House said nothing. He didn’t kiss back, not at first, but he didn’t break the embrace, either. Slowly he eased into it, his arms moving to her waist.  
It didn’t last nearly long enough. If they’d fallen back into bed, if they’d stayed like that all night, then, hell, they’d never have to talk about this from a practical, logical standpoint.

Cameron realized how much she enjoyed just kissing House. It was a strangely chaste preference from a woman who had slept with him, but maybe that was why she liked it so much. It was safe.

When they had split apart, she looked at him.

“I’m going to do this whether you like it or not,” she told him, and he glared.

“What gives you the right?”

Cameron locked eyes with him.

“You’re being an idiot.”

“You may want to check in the mirror,” his voice was low, and it sounded as if he’d tried to inject it with as much fury as he could muster, but the energy just wasn’t there.

“This is a second chance.”

“Does it look like I want one?”

Cameron glared.

“Self-pity doesn’t suit you, House. If anyone else did it, you’d call them an idiot.”

“Self-righteous pontificating doesn’t suit you… Oh, wait, yes it does.”

Cameron glared at him again. She tried to figure out what to do next. She wanted to scream, to throw things, to tell him to climb out of his own ass and listen to her for once. She wanted to tell him she was done with him, didn’t know why she’d ever gotten started with him in the first place.

This had all been a mistake, after all, so she would be completely within her rights to do any of those things. Maybe go back to Chase, or maybe leave without a forwarding address.

She didn’t do any of those things. Instead, she tilted up her head and kissed him again.

And he kissed back.


	13. Week Eight: Fixed and Broken

Allison Cameron had made a lot of mistakes in her life. Things had never been perfect, at least not at the level she had always hoped for. In the eyes of her parents, she could have always done that little bit better, gotten that A instead of a B+, and she had agreed. It hadn’t stopped there, though; when that had faded away and her parents had been less invested, it had been moral dilemmas. At her part-time job, she had been the one to walk back in the rain when someone had left the store unlocked, or who went door to door to find some little boy’s puppy. It just became who she was.

Maybe this was all a mistake. After all, she’d thrown away what she had had with Chase for this. Again. She remembered how after Kutner’s death, she’d canceled that vacation, and Chase had been suspicious that it had been to babysit House.

She’d told him he was wrong, then.

But now here she was, babysitting House in the worst way, giving something that she was almost certain she could never get in return. What was she on about, even? And why didn’t it worry her all that much?

She was lying in his bed, yet again, trying desperately to figure it all out. It would have been helpful, of course, if he had been lying in the same bed. As it was, he wasn’t. He was off at Wilson’s, doing… whatever it was that House did at Wilson’s, and Cameron was beginning to figure that she wasn’t going to see him for quite some time and that she ought to just get a move on already.

If this was some cheesy romance novel, she reminded herself, he would burst in at just that moment, sweep her up in his arms and stop her from leaving.

She paused. Counted to ten.

Nope, still no House.

Maybe she should have gone looking for him, but she was too tired. Everything they’d said about pregnancy being incredibly tiring seemed to have been accurate, though she thought that maybe it’d be less tiring if it had been Chase, the way it was supposed to be. The way it’d seemed to be pre-ordained when they’d stood up at the altar and exchanged vows; Chase wouldn’t die, Chase wouldn’t leave her with nothing but frozen sperm. Chase would always be there.

He still was there. She was the one who’d left. Because he’d changed; that was what she had told herself at the time. He had changed too much, was willing to bend morality and the rules too much, and wasn’t the man she thought she knew, hoped she knew.

But in reality, if she had left because Chase had changed, she had come back because she had changed. Her career in Chicago had gone well, she knew all the right people and made all the right money. But each night she had gone home to a quiet one-bedroom apartment overlooking the el and had ached for something more. Some sound of footsteps beside her, the feeling of another’s warmth next to her in bed.

When she first heard the footsteps, for real, she thought maybe she was imagining them, imagining it, the little sound of rat-tat-tat against the wooden floor, the clump and clatter of a cane.

“House?” she called, quietly, as if not to break the spell, as if not to let in the reality of how damaged they both were and how ill-fated this whole relationship was. If it even was a relationship at all. But for that second, as she called, she was young again, naïve again, eager to help and to save and to hold. 

“Cameron.” His voice appeared before he did, and it was a statement, not a question, as if he was deducing her rationale for being here still. He must have been doing internally, for he followed up, as if in mid-sentence with, “The only reason I can think of is that you can have sex without worrying about getting pregnant.”

Cameron kicked her feet off the bed. She smirked, but he couldn’t see it yet; he was still at the far end of the room.

“That’s the best you could come up with? No digs about how I have to fix everyone?”

House shrugged.

“Too tired.”

“Where were you?”

“What are you, my mother?” House snapped. “Porn shop. There was a 69% off sale.” Cameron rolled her eyes. 

“Seems like you’re doing better,” she replied dryly. “I see a little of the old House shining through.”

“Until the day I die.”

The words cut Cameron unexpectedly. Maybe until that sentence, so sarcastic and so typical House, she hadn’t really, truly accepted it was a possibility. After all, House always made it out. House always got away at the end, like the Roadrunner slipping away from Wile E. Coyote. 

The idea that he could actually die, be gone – poof – like that, was terrifying. Cameron didn’t believe in God, but she had always believed in House, even when he had seemed to be actively working against it.

Her mouth was dry and she tried to come up with words, words that worked. Words that made some kind of fucking sense. There weren’t any. But they were connected, whether House liked it or not. Whether Cameron liked it or not. If he went down, she went down. Together. 

“Won’t be so soon as you think,” she whispered.

“Oh, yeah,” House retorted. “Because you’re carrying the second coming and all.”

Cameron snorted.

“Second coming of you? I sure as hell hope not. If that’s true, I’m giving it up for adoption.”

“So it’s an ‘it’, now? That’s curious. Thought you were baby-obsessed.” Cameron shrugged.

“Don’t know what ‘it’ is, yet,” she explained. “When we know… Well…”

House smirked.

“What about our cases? What if it’s both? A he-she?”

Cameron glared at him.

“First of all, I don’t think ‘he-she’ is a proper term in the medical community. Secondly, that’s my kid you’re talking about. I don’t care if you’re sick or not, I’ll sock you in the balls.”

She saw the ghost of a smile creep across House’s face. 

“That’s the Cameron we know and love.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she replied, and put the pillow over her head. This was going to be the longest nine months of her life.


	14. Week Nine: Blood is Thicker Than Water

Cameron began to dream about her child. Not in a specific sense, as if she saw the baby’s face or its eyes or even knew its name, but in a vague, water-color kind of way, like a blurry painting she was supposed to pretend to know the meaning of. A Rorscach test.

In her dreams, she was walking along a beach, with no shoes, holding this child’s hand. Their grip was tight. There were waves in the distance, and seagulls, too. Maybe it was the shore she was at; she never had time to go to the shore when working for House. Her parents had asked, though, when she had first moved to New Jersey, they’d asked her when she was going to the shore.

She was walking somewhere, but she had no idea where. Out into the sunset, she supposed, but there was no end in sight. 

And then the waves started to get higher. Started to sweep over them both, threaten to drown them both. Cameron tried to hold on to the baby but everything was slipping, everything was too slick and the current was too rough.

She turned her head by force and looked to see House standing on the beach, just watching, cane in hand like he wanted to help but was unable, was rooted to the spot.

She sprung awake gasping and crying, twitching. She was twisted in the sheets and sweat was all over her forehead.

Cameron climbed out of bed and groaned. Great. She hoped this stuff wasn’t going to be happening for another seven months. That wouldn’t make work any easier; she got such limited sleep as it was and now it was going to be interrupted with that kind of business?

Her life just couldn’t get any worse right about now.

But as she dressed, she was surprised to find her heart feeling decidedly light. There had been something in it, something in having that hand in hers, that must have done that.

It was odd. She figured there had to be something in the hormones, in that would deal, that had led to this. She didn’t want to look for some kind of philosophical idea about the “glow” that she was supposed to be projecting outward. As much as she had felt for House in her past, in her more naïve days, this whole process served a practical purpose. There was no need for her to get caught up in nuances and assume that it ought to be more than it was. 

There wasn’t any time to just sit around, anyway, and just figure it all out. She had work to do. She couldn’t let this get in the way of everything else she had to accomplish. On which purpose, if she was really going to stay in Princeton, at least for now, she was really going to need a job. She had subsided on her savings for a little while, but that wouldn’t last her forever, especially with doctor’s visits and other baby-related expenses.

She reached up and rubbed her head. She hadn’t really thought this out, had she? 

***

Cameron could always ask House for her old job back. Of course, she could do that. She could even go to Cuddy about it and see if she could intercede with House. But with Chase there? And Cuddy didn’t seem to be House’s biggest fan at the moment, either, nor Cameron’s, so the likelihood she’d be doing either of them any favors right now was a slim one.

Neither of those were the biggest reason, though. 

The main thing was that she didn’t want to stand around and watch House die, watch time go through the hourglass and fade away. 

She began to sort through her CVs, getting rid of references who were no longer relevant (she deleted House’s name and re-pasted it four times before deciding to keep it) and changing her font size and headings color. Anything to be a little more appealing. Could a piece of paper really tell a hospital what they needed to know? If they had wanted to see Cameron at work, they should have seen her at work, saving lives, trying to give House a little more morality and a little less incentive to run over hospital ethics with a bulldozer.

She sighed. Admittedly, if any other hospitals knew half the stuff she had gotten mixed up in – or, hell, the real reason she’d left Princeton-Plainsboro in the first place – they would throw out her application without a second glance, no matter how good a doctor she was. So maybe the answer was just to appear normal, nonthreatening. A good ER doctor, one that could smile, be pleasant, have good bedside manner and get the job done. Maybe that was her place, back in the ER.

It hadn’t been nearly as exciting as working for House, but it hadn’t been a tenth as heart-wrenching, either. It was so often open and shut cases, bloody noses and people with a nasty flu and ear infections. There wasn’t the same mystery, but she also knew… 

Knew what were lost causes right off the bat. 

There was enough mystery right in front of her; hell, right inside her. Growing. She’d always wanted kids, but like everything…

What was she even planning to do once this one came into the world? How would she treat them? Would she love them automatically? That had to be how it worked, you looked at this tiny person and they were yours and you just loved them. 

Or would she just see the kid as a means to an end? Had she become that callous from being around House too long?

Was blood thicker than water? Would they be connected?

And shit, why did she have to figure these things out now? Why was it all hitting her in the face now? Couldn’t she break them down, make them more manageable, fix them one by one, put them on a whiteboard and cancel them out if they were too complicated, maybe come back to them later?

But she had chosen this. She would just have to follow through. There was no way around it.


	15. Week Ten: Don't Know What You Got 'Til You Lose It

“You’re quiet,” Julia commented. Cuddy had informed herself that she might very well strike her sister if she dared to follow it up with a quip about “too quiet.”

“I’m thinking about a lot,” Cuddy replied. Her voice seemed adrift in the air, not at all the confident and competent voice that had taken down so many foes to reign victorious at Princeton-Plainsboro. But confidence, even to the Nth degree, couldn’t have fixed this. 

“By which you mean,” Julia said, seeming to not even try hiding the disgust in her voice, “You’re thinking about House.”

“There’s a lot to think about with House,” Cuddy replied dryly. “The man…” She trailed off with a sigh. She couldn’t really divulge House’s confidential medical information, even though she wasn’t his doctor. She had talked about House so many times before, with Wilson or the others, but somehow, this was different. This was something she needed to keep to herself. Instead, she followed, “He got somebody pregnant.”

Julia’s eyes went wide.

“My condolences to …. It isn’t you he got pregnant, is it?”

Cuddy shook her head. “I can safely say that it wasn’t.”

“Was he cheating on you?” Julia pressed. “Is that what you broke up over? I had a friend, such a dear, she found out her husband had gotten another woman pregnant, only after she accidentally opened a bill in his mail and saw that it was for a carseat and baby formula. Poor girl had never even seen it coming.”

Cuddy sighed.

“You just feel the need to sensationalize everything, don’t you? No, this… whole situation began after the two of us broke up. No cheating.”

“Well, then, he still moved on pretty quickly after you. Considering, after all, that he drove his car into your living room and could have killed you! After he was done with that, I guess he figured he was all ready to move on…”

“Julia…” Cuddy reached forward to try and grab her sister’s hand, to calm her down. Because the more riled up she was getting, the less control Cuddy was beginning to feel she had in any of this damned, cursed situation. Cameron was having House’s baby that she didn’t even want, for such a far-fetched reason as this. 

“Why do you even care whether someone is having House’s baby or not?” Julia continued on. “I mean, it’s not exactly like he was bursting with paternal instinct before.”

“Because I love him.” Cuddy had certainly not meant to say the words, or even to think them, and she regretted them with gut-crunching urgency the second she realized that they had escaped unbidden from her mouth. She realized with those words that some part of it, some part of it had to be jealousy. But jealousy for what? About what? What part of this bizarre screwed up situation was enviable in the least?

The words echoed over and over in Cuddy’s mind. Nothing about that sentence meant anything good. It wasn’t as if it was a new sentence; she had told House that she had loved him… for the first time, that first time that had gotten them together and then somehow it had turned into being all downhill from there, one problem after another… but if it had been only problems, if it had all been a trainwreck, well, Cuddy had had enough of those kind of relationships. Those were the easy ones to forget. House would never be easy to forget.

***

Cameron was awoken to the rumble of her cell phone. She had set it to vibrate at some point in the night, and there it was, rat-tat-tat-ing against the desk she had left it on. She groaned. It had gotten harder to sleep, recently, much harder, and whoever was calling, she knew that she resented them for the simple offense of interrupting that precious slumber.

And when she fished up the little hard piece of plastic and saw that not only was it Chase, but that she had four missed calls from him, she resented him even more.

She could not deal with him right now. After all, hadn’t he been the reason that she had left in the first place? Hadn’t he been the reason that she had left it all behind, left House behind? If she’d never gotten caught up with Chase, never fallen for Chase, then…

Well, what would it be? Would she still be pregnant now, somehow, under different circumstances, ones not nearly so conflicted, not nearly so screwed up? She was finding that which side was up was becoming a new and difficult concept. It was bad enough to feel like crap, as she slowly realized she was, but to be so utterly confused…

No one had ever told her that it would be like this. She hadn’t been sure of anything ever in her life, but she was even less sure of it now. When she had married her first husband, she had naively thought… what had she thought? Could she even remember it, now, or was it all some fantasy she had woven together these days to look back and say that things were easier when she was younger? Or had she always been adrift, always clinging to the nearest thing with any faint hope of rescue?

Why had she chosen House? She hadn’t chosen Chase so much – that had been an accident, a flight of fancy that got out of hand and somehow turned into something that resembled a fucked-up version of love. How did that work? Why was it all twisted in her head now? She knew the events but the reasons, the motives, they were all screwed up and wrong like a screwed-up game of connect-the-dots where someone hadn’t followed the grid at all.

Maybe when her baby was a little older, it would play connect the dots game.

If it was ever even born. Maybe it didn’t even exist except in Cameron’s mind. Maybe she’d imagined it all.

She put a hand over her stomach and considered that. She’d seen enough movies like that. Movies where it was all in their heads. Where in the end, that was the twist. That none of it was even real and somehow that was supposed to make it all make sense. At the time, she hadn’t understood it. What was the point, then, if none of it was real?

But now… Now, she was finding that just because it was real didn’t mean that it made any sense either. Maybe one of the days coming up would bring a clue.


	16. Week Eleven: It's Complicated

“I should go see House.” Cuddy was talking to Wilson, but it was more as if she was talking to herself. He looked at her and cocked a concerned eyebrow, but didn’t say anything, and so she continued. “I should go talk to him. Maybe I can figure out where this all went so wrong.”

“Just a guess,” Wilson ventured, “It went wrong about the time he drove his car into your living room?”

Cuddy didn’t respond to that, but she knew it was right. They’d broken up before that, of course, but all of the second-guessing she had been doing had flown right out the window the moment he had pulled that stunt, the biggest and most damaging temper tantrum she had ever seen him pull, without regard for his or her own safety or any of it. But there was something else lingering there too, something she really didn’t want to admit. Something that, if it were framed positively instead of as a character flaw or psychiatric illness, might be admiration. Being weirdly touched that she had hurt him enough for him to go so far. Hadn’t she been telling him to show his emotions, to tell her what she felt?

But no, that was crazy. House was crazy – leukemia or not, House wasn’t right, and he didn’t have any place in her life now that she had a child. She hadn’t had time for all of this craziness in the past and why should she have any time for it now? She would look out for him a little and hope that he beat the disease and didn’t die, but apart from that, she needed to be done. She’d been charitable enough by not having him thrown in jail for what he’d done.

“Cuddy, maybe you should just take a step back from all of this,” Wilson suggested. “I was the one who was rooting for you and House to get together. I thought that it would be good for him but maybe…” He trailed off.

“Maybe…?”

“Maybe I should be the one to go talk to him. I need to find out how he’s dealing with this whole… Cameron situation. It’s… no doubt made things more complicated.” Wilson sighed. Cuddy looked at him, wondering if his stake in the situation had changed because of Cameron. He couldn’t actually think that she could be more suitable for House? It would be a disaster for both of them, probably was a disaster already considering that obviously something had happened between them to result in this ill-advised pregnancy.

“Fine,” Cuddy replied, picking up a clipboard and pretending to flip through it. “Go talk to him. But I can’t put it off forever.”

Wilson stood up and started to leave the room, wishing that he could. But House had always ended up being his responsibility in the end. He would never be able to escape it, whether House went to Antigua or Belize or the moon. Whether he lived… or whether he died. 

***

House was in the middle of watching Lip Service on Netflix when his doorbell rang. He had run out of episodes of the L-Word to watch and had gone out looking for similar shows, and had along the way discovered this gem of a Scottish series, with even hotter lesbians.

He found himself pretty deeply invested in whether Cat was going to choose Frankie or Sam, and hoped he would find out before he went off to meet his maker.  
Which, he liked to tell himself, he was handling just perfectly well.

House hit pause and stood up from his chair, taking his cane in hand and slowly sauntering over. He hoped it wasn’t Cameron knocking at his door, because that wasn’t a situation he felt like dealing with right now. It was also a situation that, as long as it wasn’t right in front of his face, he could act like it didn’t exist. So that’s what he had been doing.

Maybe it was Dominika. Maybe they needed to do… something to help keep their green card marriage going. Maybe she’d like some popcorn.

He opened the door and sighed when he saw that Wilson was standing before him.

“Come in,” he told his best friend dryly. “There’s lesbians on TV.”

Wilson rolled his eyes and walked inside. 

“Listen House. You’ve really done it to yourself this time…”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry about the leukemia. I knew that was going to be a bridge too far… I’ll have to scale it down next time. Why are you here, Wilson? I can do without a lecture right now… but I know that you’re going to give me one anyway. It’s your M.O.”

Wilson sighed.

“No lectures. Just checking in to see how you’re doing. A lot is going on right now, House…”

“No shit.” House sat back down on his couch and picked up the remote. 

“And you need to figure out how you’re going to handle all of it. First of all, this whole situation with Cameron. I don’t know exactly how you too got together but now… well, you don’t need me to tell you that her being pregnant means that a lot of things are going to change.”

“Oh, I know. I need to go out and get plenty of baby bonnets. I’ll even set up a registry,” House replied sarcastically. Wilson let out an exasperated sigh.

“You are incapable of taking this seriously, aren’t you?” he snapped. “This isn’t just one of your games or your bets, House! You drove your car into a woman’s house and you got another woman pregnant! You’re playing with people’s lives here!”

“I’m a doctor. I play with people’s lives all the time…” House replied with a smirk. “What else is new?”


	17. Week Twelve: Point of No Return

“So you’re really in this crazy scheme for the long haul.” That was the first thing out of Robert Chase’s mouth as his ex-wife sat across from him in the doctors’ lounge of Princeton-Plainsboro. She had come in for an ultrasound and he had found her; somehow they had found themselves here, somewhere between talking to each other and sniping at each other, with Cameron not sure which she would rather have.

“I always was,” Cameron replied defensively. “What are you talking about?”

“Well,” Chase drawled, leaning his elbow against the arm of the chair. “Three months is the point of no return.”

“You mean, if I was going to abort?” Cameron challenged, giving him a sigh. She should have known that he would be this argumentative, even if this had nothing to do with him, which it really didn’t. Once this baby was born and House was better, she would… well, she didn’t know what she would do. Maybe she would put the kid up for adoption, or… she could raise the baby as a single mother, because if the baby came out looking even remotely like House, that would ruin her chances with Chase now and forever, wouldn’t it?

She hadn’t really thought that part of it all through, maybe because this baby didn’t seem like his or her own person yet. Right now, Cameron didn’t even know if she was having a boy or a girl. She had gone to her own doctor, to see what was going on and everything, but they hadn’t really been able to see much yet. The baby had seemed so small that it seemed like more just a part of Cameron than anything outside of her. Maybe she would have to wait until the kid started kicking to really come to terms with the whole thing.

Maybe she wouldn’t even have to. She didn’t hope for that outcome, but she knew that it was a possibility, and she also knew that if she miscarried she was going to cut her losses and not try again, say that it was a good shot and just move on. There was no way that she would want to go through this whole thing twice; it already had ripple effects that she hadn’t counted on and if she got the chance to stop the whole plan right then, right now – well, she thought she would probably take it.

“I’m not trying to imply anything, Allison,” Chase began, but Cameron shot him a glare.

“Oh, of course not,” she fired back. “The fact is that this is the issue. This is a thing, this is, most likely, going to happen, unless nature gets in my way. So what are you going to do about it?”

“What am I going to do about it?” Chase inquired. “What are either of us going to do about it? You’ve conveniently landed us in a situation that is not very likely to get us back together…”

“Well, considering you seem to be more interested in sleeping with Thirteen…” Cameron fired back, “From what I’ve heard…” 

“I’m not sleeping with Thirteen!” Chase fired back, far too quickly. This led Cameron to assess, quite quickly, that if he wasn’t already, he was at least thinking about it, and she threw her hands up in frustration.

“You do know that if I wouldn’t even be in this situation at all if I hadn’t come back for you,” she told Chase, rising out of the chair and instinctively and protectively reaching for her stomach. Everything was messed up, up to and including this child, but maybe that was wrong. Maybe this kid, who didn’t even exist yet, was the only thing that made sense in the world at all.

“You can’t actually be serious,” Chase said to her, in a slow, incredulous voice. “You cannot be blaming the fact that you came back and decided to sleep with your ex-boss, not to mention my current boss, then turned around and said you were doing it for me… You can not really be trying to blame this on me? You were the one who left me in the first place! You’re doing this all on a whim. How can I trust anything you say at all?”

“I’m doing something on a whim?” Cameron rounded on him. It hurt to be this angry; she could feel her whole body flushing, her forehead turning hot at it, but she didn’t care. She was furious and she was going to make him hear about it because this… this was all his fault. She did lower her voice, however, as she hissed, “You killed a man, Chase. I didn’t leave you on a whim. I was even about to stick by you until I realized you didn’t even feel bad about it! You know what they call someone who doesn’t feel bad about hurting people! A sociopath!”

Chase stared at her before shaking his head.

“You’re ridiculous, Cameron. Listen. We’re done. We’re way past done, in fact. I don’t want to see you, talk to you, or look at you. Have whoever’s kid you want, date whoever you want to, and have a nice life. But you can give up on thinking I’m going to be in it. What I did, I did for reasons you aren’t ever going to understand. You shouldn’t have walked back into my life, Allison… I don’t want you there.”

With that, he turned and pushed the doors forward, leaving the room and, it seemed, leaving Cameron’s life the same way she had thought she was leaving his when she went back to Chicago. Had he been right? Did she just want to have it both ways?

There had to be an answer she could figure out for all of this, some way to fix the whole mess. But there wasn’t. She had put her cards on the table, and she was in the game, whether she was going to win or lose. It really was the point of no return.


	18. Week Thirteen: Babysitting, Babywaiting

“Mariana, I understand if you have to call out, but…” Cuddy let her voice trail off with a sigh. It wasn’t fair of her to hold such high expectations for her nanny, she knew. The woman got sick and had her own family just as much as anyone else did. But it was going to lead to the day becoming infinitely more complicated and it was only five o’clock in the morning.

Trying to convince Mariana to come in regardless seemed destined for disaster, considering that the woman had to pause on the phone and throw up two times just within the phone call, so she told her to get better and decided to look for a back-up sitter that could come in on short notice.

She could call up her sister, of course, but she didn’t really feel like a whole litany of words about the choices that she’d made recently was going to help her at all right now. She’d barely be able to get through the door against the torrent of advice. She could call her mother as well, but that might go the same way – except that her mother wanted her and House to get back together instead of break up.

Cuddy walked back and forth, almost pacing. There was an idea that was presenting itself to her, but it was doing so with a clear coda that reminded her that it was an awful idea, perhaps the worst idea.

No, she reminded herself a moment later, the worst idea would have been to call House and find out if he could babysit. Not that he hadn’t before – and, apart from swallowing a quarter somehow, Rachel had come out of it unscathed – but in his current state House wasn’t likely to be much use to anyone at all. He seemed to be barely any use to himself.

But there was another person – a person who was really too entwined with House currently to know any better, but perhaps also someone who really ought to have a day-long lesson in what she was getting herself into. And a person who wasn’t currently employed, at least not that Cuddy knew about.

Cuddy picked up the phone and dialed the number.

“Hello?” a previously perky, now extremely tired voice answered.

“Hello, Dr. Cameron. It’s Dr. Cuddy. Am I interrupting anything?”

“No,” Cameron replied, sounding a little suspicious. “Is this another lecture about what I’m choosing to do about House? Because if it is, I don’t need it right now. I have enough going on…”

“I wasn’t calling to lecture you, Dr. Cameron.” As much as she would have liked to, she reminded herself. Cameron’s plan didn’t seem to be well thought out at all, but any plan that was connected to House never seemed to be a well thought out plan. “I’m calling because I need your help with something.”

“With a case?” Cameron inquired, “Because I can’t really be around the hospital right now…”

Cuddy cut her off. 

“It’s more of a… personal thing..”

***

Cameron’s eyes went wide.

“What do I do?”

“Thought you liked kids, Dr. Cameron,” Cuddy told her evenly.

Cameron blinked.

“Well, yeah, but… I haven’t babysat since high school. She’s…” She watched Rachel take a small lap around the room with eagerness, yelling happily. “Small. And fast.”

“And she breaks things, so be careful,” Cuddy warned. “Don’t let her out the door. She can outwit you. You’re smart, Dr. Cameron, but my kid… my kid is wiley.”

“As in the coyote?” 

Cuddy laughed.

“More effective than the coyote. And less explosions. So keep an eye out. I figure it might help to give you a preview of what you’re going to have to expect.”  
Cameron peeked around Cuddy’s shoulder and looked at the small child, who then sat down on the floor and began sticking her fingers in her mouth with happiness. She hadn’t really thought about it that far, now had she? She had thought long and hard about having the baby – she’d replayed that scene over and over in her head until she thought her eyes would pop out. But actually raising the child? How hadn’t it truly crossed her mind until now? 

“I’m up to the challenge.” She tried to say it lightly, as if the whole thing was funny, ha-ha funny, something that didn’t require that much actual effort.   
Inside, she could feel herself shaking.

***

“Rachel,” Cameron said with increasing exasperation, “I told you not to grab that juice pitcher off the counter. Now look what you’ve done!” She grabbed the big package of paper towels off of the counter, at least the part of it that wasn’t soaked in juice, and by the time she started mopping at it she already hated the tone she had taken with her. 

She reached up and rubbed at her eyes, tiredness flooding into her body already. That brief moment was enough time, however, for Rachel to scoot up on the table, swinging her legs and gazing over at her hapless babysitter innocently.

“I was bad, Miss Allison?” she asked, making her eyes as big and wide as saucers. “Are you mad at me?”

In all honesty, the answer was yes. Rachel hadn’t stopped moving since Cameron had gotten there, and if this had been the hospital she would have thought – only thought, she promised herself – about sedating the kid so that she could actually sit down for a few moments and have a proper cup of coffee.

Not that she was supposed to be drinking coffee right now. They seemed to keep changing that, admittedly – one journal said to lay off caffeine entirely, another said to do everything in moderation… Cameron was beginning to think the job – pregnant woman as well as babysitter and… God, mother – she was actually going to be a mother… was impossible if caffeine wasn’t in the equation.

Not that she was having much time to think about it, before a Crash emitted from the next room.

“Rachel!”


	19. Week Fourteen: Maybe in Another Life, I'll Find You There

“There’s really nothing else I could have done.” Cuddy was sitting across from her sister and looking at her mother, too, answering a question that she hadn’t been asked.

“You haven’t answered the question. Why is he even still employed by you? No matter how smart you keep saying he is, you can’t keep justifying having him around. If he’s really that much of a genius, wouldn’t some other hospital be lucky to have him? Oh, so lucky.”

“Can you please just let it go?” Cuddy snapped.  
She thought back over the years, remembering each and every time that her sister had driven her nuts. Suddenly, any and all good times of their childhood felt as if they were replaced by a never-ending series of events in which Julia had messed up anything good that Cuddy had wanted for herself, always making herself the prettier of the two even as Cuddy herself had always been considered the smarter of the two. 

“You never let it go,” Cuddy continued angrily. “You just keep on, you keep pushing it until there’s nothing left!” In her mind she added, _Just like House does._

“There’s no need to get like that about it,” Julia replied with an offended air. “You’re the one who is supposed to be running a hospital, teaching people how to be better, how to be healthier, but you surround yourself with the most unhealthy person you’ve ever known in your life. If you were giving someone advice, if you were telling someone how to live…”

“I’m not a psychologist, Julia. I’m an administrator. I keep things running smoothly. That’s my job. That’s what I do.”

“Sometimes things aren’t running smoothly because they aren’t meant to, Lisa.”

“Meant to? By who? Some omnipotent being?”

“I didn’t imply that.”

“Yes you did. You’re assuming that there is some kind of great scheme to all of this. Well, maybe there is, and maybe there isn’t, but all of them is above my pay grade, okay? I’m just here to run my little hospital and try to save some lives. And right now, one of those lives is the one that House has. He’s sick. He needs help.”

“That’s the truth,” Julia muttered dryly, and Cuddy glared at her but didn’t respond. 

“He’s gotten a woman pregnant.” Cuddy said it under her breath, wanting to take back the words before a second had passed. They did not need to know about this, especially given the conclusions they would jump to as soon as she said the words. She rose from her seat and looked between the two before adding, “Not me” and walking back into the kitchen.

***

“If this place started running like a hospital again, and not a soap opera, some of us would be really appreciative.”

Chase looked up to see Foreman frowning at him, holding a black pen in his hand as he delivered the words. 

Chase sighed. Of all the people who were likely to call him to task, Foreman was definitely one of the more likely. The man might as well have his face in the dictionary next to the phrase “no nonsense”, even though he and Thirteen had had a few drama-filled arguments in their day. 

Thirteen was avoiding Chase unless it was necessary to discuss a diagnosis, and Taub was generally rolling his eyes with anything Chase had to say to him, dropping half-lidded hints that he didn’t think much of the whole situation, either. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chase asked, trying to act as if he didn’t know. Perhaps deflection was the best strategy here, as confronting the situation head on didn’t seem to be in his immediate future. He couldn’t talk to Cameron – not again, not about this. He’d have to wait until she had the baby and then, maybe if this kid was out of sight and out of mind, Chase could pretend things were back to normal. Back to how they were before Dibala, before House got sick, before Chicago and the reality that Cameron had actually slept with House.

“He means that we’re all tired of you,” Thirteen spoke up, her voice laced with cynicism. Chase sighed – it wasn’t that he didn’t care about Thirteen. He would have to be a fool not to. She was beautiful, and a sharp doctor, and a good companion if he had ever wanted to make it go that far. The problem was that he didn’t. He couldn’t picture himself being married to anyone other than Cameron, and Cameron had come and gone. Perhaps it was the old Catholic guilt, some kind of need to punish himself (and, Thirteen would probably hasten to add, everyone around him.)

“Okay, if this is going to turn into Mean Girls, you’ll find me in the other room,” Taub said with a shake of his head. “I’m already going to have to deal with this in fourteen years from both sides…”

No one, however, was paying attention to Taub pre-emptively reminiscing about the teenage years of Sophie and Sophia. House had just walked into the room.

“Differential diagnosis,” he said, walking over to the whiteboard as if there was nothing at all weird about him walking in during the discussion of yet another crisis he’d brought about. 

“For who?” Taub replied dryly. “We’re working on a case, but I don’t think you’ve really been paying…”

House ignored him and wrote on the whiteboard, “Nausea, vomiting, groin rash.”

“If these are his own symptoms,” Chase muttered, “I’m leaving.” At least, however, with House being House for the moment, Chase could pretend that nothing had changed. House was simply his mentor, and he was simply the man’s fellow, and Cameron was still in Chicago because of, what did they call it? Irreconcilable differences. The nicest, most tactful possible way to say “hey buddy, you had a chance, and you blew it. You blew it straight to hell.”


	20. Week Fifteen: Needs

“We need to talk,” Cameron told House, before he had a chance to tell her otherwise. She had appeared at his apartment, hands on her hips, with a tone of voice that didn’t accept “no” as a potential answer. House reminded himself that pregnant women had been known to do crazy things like lift up cars, and he didn’t really want Cameron to pick up a car and throw it at his head.

“Sure,” he said matter-of-factly, “Let’s talk, then. Can I get my clothes on first?”

“No,” Cameron said, then smiled blandly. It was a bad joke, and she knew it, but House simply backed up in response to let her get into the apartment. “It’s been months, and we haven’t actually sat down and really talked about why we’re doing this.”

“What you mean to say,” House countered, “Is why you’re doing it. I don’t recall being given a whole lot of choice in the matter. This is your plan, and it’s a crazy plan, and I’m all for crazy plans… But I don’t think this is going to work out, Cameron. Thank you and please play again.”

“That’s it. You don’t even want there to be any kind of hope. Is that it? You’d rather just roll over and die?”

“You’d rather read into everything I’ve said? Why do I even bother saying anything at all when I can get the Cliff Notes on what I actually said from you?”

House threw his hands up in the air and hobbled over to retrieve his cane from the corner of the room.

“Where are you going?” Cameron barked.

“Somewhere there’s a bomb shelter,” House replied. “I think little Katie is going to go kaboom.” He looked at her. 

She crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“Would it be completely out of line to ask you to take something seriously for once in your life? I mean, you’re dying, and you don’t even take that seriously. If you don’t take life and death seriously… then how the hell am I supposed to get through to you? I mean, that’s all there is, when you boil down to it.”

“Unless you listen to Chase,” House fired back, “He thought there was a lot more out there. God and all of that.”

“I think it’s just life and death,” Cameron reiterated, “And if you waste it, then it’s gone. And you’re gone.”

“Then why care about anything?” House shot back, “If there’s no one to care and no one to impress, why not just walk on out? Face the final curtain as said the Chairman…”

“Mao?” Cameron interrupted.

“Of the Board,” House replied, rolling his eyes, “But if we’re going to talk, then let’s talk. My clock is ticking, as it were, and I don’t have all day.”

“Well, so’s mine,” Cameron said, “And if we don’t work this out, I may just have to hit you up on child support for being the stubborn ass that you love to prove yourself to be.”

“You would sue a man with leukemia for child support? That’s not the Cameron we know and love.”

“No, that’s the Cameron you have royally pissed off recently. What more can I do to try and help you, House? I’ve given up everything that was important to me for you.”

“No, you gave up everything for yourself. You can’t be happy unless you’re a martyr.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You left Chase because of the whole ‘dead dictator’ debacle, because if you were okay with that, that meant you weren’t a regular Mother Theresa. You weren’t what you saw when you looked in the mirror, or what you wanted to see, rather.”

Cameron snorted at him.

“And you are? Did you dream of growing up to be… you? Or were you always you, even before the leg? Maybe even before you were born?”

“Yeah,” House retorted, “Maybe I was formed bitter in my mother’s womb. Maybe it’s genetic. I suppose we’ll find out. Or you will, if you decide to raise this kid instead of using it for spare parts and then discarding it.”

Cameron looked at him, horrified, her mouth hanging slightly open.

“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“You should spend more time around me, then.”

Cameron let out a long, frustrated gasp and sat down.

“It’s exhausting, dealing with you. Listen to you. All you do is grouse and complain.”

“Was there a point here or are we just having an airing of grievances? I didn’t realize that today was Festivus.”

“I need you to step up. There’s some things you have to do. I can’t do this all alone, okay? It’s too much.”

“Step up and do what, Cameron? This kid hasn’t even been born yet. I’m all up for changing diapers and babysitting when it’s born… if I’m actually alive, that is. Wouldn’t that be the kicker? If I kick off before then? That would put a spanner in your plan, wouldn’t it?”

Cameron kicked his cane, and House stumbled back, steadying himself on the dresser.

“You’re a real dick, you know that, right?”

“This isn’t the first time that I’ve heard those words… Not even the first coming from you. You think that I’d change my tune just because I’m dying?”

“Well, you were the one who said dying changes everything.”

“Did I?” House asked, and then he shrugged. “For you, babies change everything, I guess. Nice cute wiggly babies with their lifesaving, life-changing powers. Maybe ours will come out already with an itty bitty cane. No, you’d want yours to be sunshine and rainbows, blonde hair and a bright smile, right, Cameron? Go home.” He turned to walk back to his bed. “You’re out of your league yet again.”

“And what league is that?” Cameron fired back, “The league of misanthropic idiots?” But the words fell hollow, and she turned to leave, wondering whether she was in over her head or whether maybe she had already drowned.


	21. Week Sixteen: What's Done is Not Quite Done

Wilson was used to finding himself sitting outside of House’s apartment, but not usually other these exact circumstances. The news of Cameron’s pregnancy, and all the weird details of it, had spread around the hospital like wildfire. The nurses seemed to never want to talk about anything else. It was as if Wilson had ceased living in real life and had moved into some sort of soap opera where every moment was rife with dramatic confessions and incidental music.

Wilson wished that, eventually, he could get back to living his own life. He thought maybe at some point, House would get it together and Wilson wouldn’t be stuck being either Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, or both.

He leaned in and knocked again. It was time for him to put his foot down. House had to start acting like an adult; had to take responsibility for this whole mess, and had to agree to some kind of treatment so that he wouldn’t die and throw Wilson’s entire universe completely out of whack. Because at the end of the day, Wilson needed him.

House was a sort of ying to his yang. He wondered if, if House ever grew up, that would change. If House would move on and have a little family and start to get his stuff together, then he wouldn’t make Wilson pay for his lunch, and he wouldn’t show up at bizarre hours of the day to make disjointed requests. But House really had gone too far this time – he had ran his car into Cuddy’s house, after all. Some part of House had apparently thought that had been a good way to handle his stress.

There was a slow creak before the door finally opened. As House tended to do, he was screwing with Wilson, trying to get the upper hand in a situation where it wasn’t even necessary.

But if he didn’t do that, would it mean that House had given up entirely, taken this diagnosis to heart and just decided to die? Maybe this was a good sign. Maybe this was what Wilson needed to see, what he needed to hear from his best friend.

He wasn’t even sure anymore. 

“House,” he said, once the other man was in view. “We need to talk.”

“Oh no,” House retorted, “You’re going to tell me ‘it’s not you, it’s me’, aren’t you? This happens with all the guys after I finally put out.”

Wilson had the oddest compulsion to just flip him off like they were both kids, but he resisted it and just sighed.

“House, you’ve really done it this time. You know that, right? Have you been to see Cameron?”

“No,” House retorted, “I figured I would get a head start on my new role as deadbeat dad.”

“You know, Cameron cares a lot about you, still. You two were almost an item at one point. Don’t you remember that?”

“Of course. I’m sick, I’m not an amnesiac.” House turned away from Wilson. “Nothing good comes from me getting close to people.” 

Wilson rubbed at his eyes, getting rid of the crust that was forming over his eyes. He hadn’t slept properly, not in days. Trying to figure out a plan for House, again. It was like it had been when Tritter was trying to arrest House, when he’d taken Wilson’s car too and taken away his prescription privileges – it seemed to always be the case that when House hurt, Wilson hurt right along with him. Like House was a kind of voodoo doll that could affect Wilson, too.

He tried to pretend that it wasn’t, also, that he was a little jealous. Wilson had been married three times and didn’t have any children; it wasn’t so much that he didn’t want them, but it just hadn’t worked out that way. House had, somehow, managed to make someone fall over themselves to give him a child he didn’t even want. Like House was going to be able to care for anyone or anything else, especially these days… But maybe this was a good thing, a good thing that was a total accident for House.

“House, you need to figure out where you’re going to go, with this thing with Cameron.”

“You mean the snapper?” House inquired.

“How are you feeling about this? I mean, considering… Everything.”

“Considering what, exactly?”

“Don’t be an idiot, House.”

House’s eyes narrowed at him.

“Wilson… Just leave.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Just go ahead and leave. I’m busy dying. I don’t need to hear your advice right now about how I can make my last few weeks better. I’ll just invite over a bunch of strippers instead.”

“House, can’t you take anything seriously? I’m trying to help you, you know.”

“I’ve noticed,” House snapped. “And you’re always trying to help me. That’s good – but you know what, some people can’t be helped. Other people don’t want help. I’m in both of those categories, so you can go to hell, Wilson.”

Wilson raised an eyebrow.

“House, I know you’re suffering right now, I know you’re in pain but…”

“Quit that ‘I care for you’ crap – I thought that was Cameron’s department. But now she’s too busy trying to pretend she’s my girlfriend. I never thought I’d live to have Baby Mama Drama.”

“If you don’t get it together,” Wilson snapped, “No one will care what you live long enough to do. You’re taking another opportunity and you’re spitting on it.” He ground his teeth together. “Sometimes, House, you know what? Sometimes I just don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do with you.”

“Welcome to the club. President: Me.” House reached over on to the dresser and picked up a pack of cigarettes, taking one out.

“You’re seriously smoking? You decided to start smoking now? After you got leukemia?” Wilson threw his hands up. “You’re impossible.”

House picked up a lighter and flicked it, lighting the cigarette.

“What are you worried about, Wilson? It’s not like I’m going to get cancer.”


	22. Week Seventeen: It's Not You, It's Me

Cuddy, in retrospect, probably should have known better than to walk into her office without looking. After all, that was something she’d learned not long after she had hired House – it wasn’t a good idea to let your enemy (she still couldn’t think of House as her enemy, but that characterization made a certain amount of sense) spot your back, especially if you couldn’t spot theirs at the same time.

She still, however, hadn’t expected to walk into her office and just see House standing there silently. It was downright creepy.

“House!” She nearly dropped the papers she’d been holding in her hands, and she cursed at herself. Even if she was a little afraid of House now – and she still didn’t want to admit she was – she didn’t want to show it. There was nothing good that could come from showing her back, showing she was vulnerable. Admitting that there were things she hadn’t known or suspected about House when she’d opened herself up to dating him. To caring about him. Hell, to loving him, if she could call it that. 

“Cuddy.”

Cuddy took a moment to wonder at the fact that he hadn’t called her Lisa when they’d started dating. Had that been a sign that something was right there, or that something had been wrong? It had to be that something was wrong because, in normal relationships, in relationships where things are going good, no one drives their car through your front door. Cuddy wasn’t stupid. She’d read all the literature on red flags and abusive relationships, hadn’t she? But she felt like this was something else. Something outside of the norm, even the norm of the bad.

“What are you doing, House? You should be at home… Resting, or…”

“I should be at home dying, is what you mean,” House replied, twirling his cane as if to underscore the point. “Quietly, and out of the way.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.” Something in Cuddy was rising, as much as she didn’t want to take the bait. Somehow, with House, she always ended up taking the bait. 

“Well, if I am going to die, isn’t a hospital an appropriate place for it? People tend to do that around here.”

“Not in your department,” Cuddy replied dryly. “You have a pretty good record of saving them.”

House made a noise of assent, maybe. He looked around the office.

“Not much has changed since I’ve been away.”

“Planning on ramming your car into this office, too? So you can get a good look at it?”

Cuddy’s voice was showing strain, but not fear. She still wondered why no part of her really felt afraid. Or did she? This was House, but this was all the sides of House she had willfully pretended weren’t there when she had decided to see if this would work.

“Cuddy, you need to get past it.”

“I don’t need to get past anything, House. What you need is to get out of my office. Aren’t you busy doing something? Dying, as you so helpfully supplied earlier.” Cuddy glared at him. She didn’t want to feel pity or affection or love. The only thing she wanted to feel was anger. Anger for what he’d done, what he’d put her through, for her own broken heart and the one he’d obviously leave in Cameron. Cameron… that reminded her. “Isn’t there someone you’re meant to be sleeping with, considering you got her pregnant?”

“That was a fluke,” House commented. “Then again, you thought our entire being together was a fluke, which was why you pulled the plug on it.”

“Are we really having this conversation?” Cuddy threw her hands up in the air. “Get out of my office, and while you’re at it, get out of my life. I could have had you arrested and thrown in jail – which by the way, I’ve still having people talk my ear off for not doing – you could have gone to prison and you could have lost your license. But I guess I’m a softy.”

“I guess you are.” House’s eyes moved downward, and Cuddy found herself feeling a twinge of regret. If only she had been able to really rely on House, to know that he’d come through for her if she needed it. Then she’d have never had to break up with him, and everything that had gone wrong would be undone. If she had gone back in time… but would she have? Or would she have stayed with Lucas, or no one at all, and just pretended she didn’t have any feelings for House at all?

“House,” Cuddy began, putting her hands on her hips and letting them dangle there, helplessly. “Listen to me. You need to worry about getting better. You and me… and whatever we are, or what we were – we can worry about that once you’re okay again.”

House chuckled bitterly.

“You mean, after I die?”

“That sounds a bit like giving up.” Cuddy’s voice came out harshly than she intended, but she kept on with it. She couldn’t think of anything else to do. “You’re Greg House. You don’t give up. You keep going until you find the answer… Unless, now, you’re just a shadow of your former self, in which case, I’m embarrassed for you.”

House cocked his head to the side.

“So what you think I need is a peptalk?”

“You need something, all right. But it’s something I can’t give you, House. You need to figure yourself out.” She reached out her hands as if to push him away, but ended up resting them on his shoulders. This was the same man she’d told to feel his feelings, to stop holding everything inside. But was she afraid he’d go to the other extreme? Or that he already had? What was House really capable of, underneath it all? Was she willing to stick around and find out? She could get a job anywhere in the world with her qualifications. She didn’t need to stand here and watch him self-destruct. 

He walked out without another word, and she found herself watching after him. She could work anywhere else in the world, but nowhere else in the world had House.


	23. Week Eighteen: Let's Get Ready to Rumble

Cameron tapped her fingers against the desk. This waiting was beginning to slowly drive her insane; no, wait, scratch that. Quickly drive her insane. 

Soon, House would be coming back in. Soon, he would decide whether to rehire her. Soon, she would now whether she had a career anymore.

She’d been going four months without one, admittedly, telling herself that time off was what she really need to wrap her mind around everything that had happened. But she had found herself curled up in the bathroom the other night, crying her eyes out and considering whether or not she’d be able to strangle herself with the shower curtain. It wasn’t like she would actually do it, she reminded herself, but the fact that the image had occurred was bad enough.

Admittedly, sitting inside House’s office waiting for him felt like a move that House himself would do; maybe that was the genius in it. The man was very good at predicting what other people would do, but Cameron had never seen him be nearly so sure about himself and his own intentions. That must be why he had Wilson, after all – Wilson was that sounding board, the one to tell House what he was really thinking and feeling, even if House himself was loathe to accept that it was true. 

She could use a Wilson right about now. Now that she’d messed things up with Chase – probably for good, this time – she was completely on her own. If it wasn’t for this ridiculous task she’d set out to perform, saving House’s life (how ironic, she thought, I’ve become the one atheist who believes in miracles), she would go back to Chicago. She had a life there, now, friends and a career and a new husband, if she wanted him. If she could allow herself to put House and Princeton-Plainsboro off to the side for good and just get on with her life.

Easier said than done, of course.

What was she going to do with this kid, for one, once all was said and done? Give it up for adoption? Raise it?

What had House asked her so long ago, when she’d flipped out about his handling of yet another patient?

“Who did you lose?” he had asked. “Was it a baby?” Not for the first time, she had wanted to strangle House, or break his nose, or do whatever it took to get him out of her head with all his sarcasm and cynicism. 

Until she’d convinced herself he wasn’t an evil man but a broken bird. A broken bird that needed to be cradled in her arms until everything was all right.

How stupid had she been? How stupid did she continue to be? This whole thing had been a mistake… unless, of course, it hadn’t been.

She was still hanging over the edge, trying to figure out whether it wouldn’t be better to just go home and come back later, when the hard part was over, and figure it out then. After all, she could go back to Chicago, have the baby there and then bring the kid back. But she was afraid that once she touched down again, she would never want to return. Then what would she do? Who would she be? It wasn’t as if she had any doubts that she could juggle it – being a mom and a doctor. That would be some kind of cheap eighties sitcom plot.

It was that, if she left, the meaning would all fall apart. And Cameron had tried to build a life on meaning, a career on meaning.

The door opened and House entered. She couldn’t focus on him at first, could only hear the click-click, click-click of his cane against the floor. 

“House!” Cameron exclaimed, and she hopped out of his chair, a little bit too fast.

“No need to get up,” House told her dryly. “It looks as if you’ve been waiting for me. What is it now? Are you going to bring me on the Maury show? Because regardless of the results, I think I can promise that I won’t be doing any backflips.”

Cameron rolled her eyes at him.

“I want to know that we’re doing the right thing.”

“That’s not why you’re here. You’re Cameron – to you, you’re always doing the right thing, even when you’re not.”

Cameron snorted.

“What do you mean? Quit giving me riddles, House. I’m feeling like I’m just… doing stupid stuff and thinking it’s going to make a difference. But it doesn’t make a difference, because nothing does. You’re going to…” she trailed off.

“What makes you unable to say it? Why are you even wrapped up in knots about it, Cameron?”

She glared at him.

“I can’t be upset that you’re terminally ill? What, is that the newest of the House Rules? Are you that bent out of shape if anyone dares show any kind of emotion? Ever hear the phrase ‘repressed’?”

“Oh, are we talking about Freud now?” House asked, “Because I’m sure that he would have a lot to say about my long, hard cane.”

Cameron let out a snort.

“I don’t even know why I bother talking to you at all, House. I can see why Cuddy broke it off with you. She ought to be canonized for putting up with you as long as she did.”

“She stuck around because of my long, hard cane. Weren’t you listening?”

“Sounds more like a compensatory mechanism,” Cameron fired back. “See, I can make snarky remarks about Freud, too.”

House moved his hands to her waist. She could hear him breathing in.

“What would Freud say about this?”

She wanted to tell him that he was an idiot, that she had been wasting her time putting up with him again, and that there was no way in hell she was about to sleep with him, right here in his office. She pictured the old movies, where women pushed men away or slapped them across the face and asked things like “What do you take me for?”

Maybe it was the hormones, or maybe it was an obnoxious part of her brain or heart, but she didn’t do either of those things.

She pressed her lips against House’s and held on for dear life.


	24. Week Nineteen: Memories

“Do you ever think about…?” Cuddy was standing next to Wilson, standing in the stairwell and staring down at the maze of stairs down below.

“About?” Wilson prompted.

“Amber,” Cuddy replied, quietly. She didn’t want to ask the question, but there it was; it had come out of her mouth, out of her thoughts and she had better own up to it. She still didn’t know why she had asked it, however.

Wilson paused for a moment, then slowly nodded.

“Not as much as I used to,” he admitted. He looked at her as if to ask, silently, where she was going with this. Cuddy wished she knew the answer. Was she just dragging up someone else’s pain as an excuse to not have to think about her own? If so, that would reveal a callous side to her that she didn’t like to acknowledge – but, as with everything, it was there somewhere, under the surface. “But I do miss her. I don’t feel like anyone ever really… ‘got’ me the way that Amber did.”

Cuddy paused, thinking about the phrase. What did it actually mean to “get” someone, exactly? Just to understand them, to grasp where they were coming from? That was something she had always been good at, to rationalize things and to understand them from a variety of perspectives. That wasn’t what Wilson meant, though, not really – to understand someone on a deeper level meant… well, what did it mean, exactly? Did it mean to give up your own…whatever it was? Your own worldview? It seemed as if one couldn’t gain something without being willing to give up some other piece; matter could be not created nor destroyed.

“What about House?” Cuddy blurted, and again she hated the fact that she had said it as soon as she had. She could take away whatever brownie points she had given herself for not mentioning him, wipe away the board and start over.

Wilson chuckled.

“Don’t tell me you’re implying that he and I had something going on besides friendship – or that we are now. You’ve known us too long to hit us with that old chestnut.”

“Well, I know that you’ve been married three times during when you’ve been best friends with House. Maybe it would have been easier to marry him instead.”

“Or maybe it would drive me to an early grave. He already has, half of the time.”

Cuddy laughed, then let out a sigh. Wilson turned to her.

“So, shoot. What is it you’re really asking about? Because as much as I’d love to work through everything with Amber… I don’t think that’s really what you’re getting at. I’m pretty certain that this is, yet again, all about House. And his strange… agreement with Cameron that I’m still trying to wrap my head around. If I even should.”  
Cuddy shrugged. 

“I’m talking around my own issues, I suppose. I’m jealous. It sounds stupid to say, really stupid, with all of this going on, though. There’s not time to be jealous – hell, I don’t have time to be jealous. I barely have time to be a hospital administrator and a mother and a human being at the same time; I definitely can’t pencil in being some petty, bitter ex.”

“After everything House has done, I don’t know if a little bit of bitterness wouldn’t be completely out of line.”

“You can’t be bitter towards a man who’s dying.”

“Who says you can’t?”

Cuddy shrugged her shoulders.

“People. Everyone. Humanity. I mean, if Cameron is having a whole kid to try and save him, I can’t really be over here taking pot shots.”

“Who says?”

Cuddy cocked her head to the side and proceeded to glare at Wilson.

“Did anybody tell you that you missed your calling to be a psychiatrist? A really annoying one who has a tendency to look at you and say, ‘And how does that make you feel?’”

Wilson shrugged.

“You’re the one who brought up my dead girlfriend. I thought that you were looking for advice.”

“I’m not looking for advice,” Cuddy told him, but then added with a sigh, “I could probably use some, though. I thought that this whole Cameron situation would be over by now, that she’d either bail out on the whole idea or whisk Chase back to Chicago with her baby. I didn’t think we would be this far along with this… Or even that House was going to be in this much danger. I thought he’d have found out he had some rare but curable disease, or nothing at all. Or that this has all been a very long prank to get back at me for breaking up with him.”

“I thought he got back at you by driving his car into your house.”

“House likes to leave no stone unturned.”

Wilson sighed.

“Have you considered that maybe… maybe he just really has nowhere else to go? Honestly, I feel like… I don’t know, maybe House has given up. And so maybe… you can be mad, but if your being mad gets you back with him… I don’t know what you want to do.”

“Are you really trying to match-make me back with the walking reason my house is a construction mess and I can’t sleep in my own bed?”

Wilson shrugged.

“Maybe that’s the reason you asked. Maybe that’s what you’re looking to do, Cuddy. Honestly… I don’t know. Getting back with him would be a mistake. But you wouldn’t be here asking me about Amber and House and regrets if you didn’t want him back. Maybe you just need to put it all to the side, or go over and yell at him for a few hours or… Whatever makes this work for you.”

Cuddy let out a slight snort and let her gaze travel downward; she focused on one single tile.

Little things could make up big things, couldn’t they? The ripple effect? 

She still wasn’t sure if she wanted to create a ripple, in case she started another tsunami. Then where would she be?


	25. Week Twenty: 'Round the Bend

When Cameron had been a young girl, she had been like a lot of other little girls – she had had a small family of dolls who she pushed around on strollers and fed bottles to. She had held them up and run around with glee, declaring herself a “mama” to anyone who would listen and some people who wouldn’t.

Her parents had thought that it was hilarious.

Cameron had been that little girl once, but not for very long. A few years later she’d found science and bike-riding and all manner of tomboyish activities, and the desire to be a “mama” faded away into some idea of something she might want to do one day when she was… done.

Done doing what, she wasn’t exactly sure. Caught up on her career, perhaps? At a place where it felt good to be able to take a breather.  
There was also a little voice that said it would be when she was done living. 

Now, all that had been pushed to the side. The feminist part of her would scoff and say, after all this, she’d done it for a man no less, and a man like house. She couldn’t dress it up in the name nobility that she could when thinking about her late, first husband – it was a selfless act that was drawn over a good deal of selfishness.

But thinking about it wasn’t going to help her now. She needed to decide on some courses of action, now rather than later. She was five months ago now and the thing that had been a blip on the screen was quickly developing into a little somebody, to her slight dismay. Because after a certain point, she couldn’t wrap this all up in the good deed she had felt compelled to do (and the fact that it had worked at all still through her – a reason to believe in miracles, if she believed in them). This was a life she had created, and all of the excuses and reasons were starting to feel as if they fell a little flat at the end of the day.

Once this was done, however, she could get back to her life – once she figured out what to do about the baby, after all. 

It wasn’t as if this was a surrogate type deal, after all – even though the actual child had been so far from her mind when she had proposed this crazy scheme, she would have one nonetheless. She would be a mother. 

It frustrated her that she hadn’t really thought about exactly what that meant until now. Shouldn’t she be having existential crises, or at least picking out paint and special colors of curtains? Was it normal to feel so… calm? So numb, about all of it?

She looked around. Somehow, in her thoughts, she had wandered to the grocery store – admittedly, there were many worse places to wander, but she was coming face to face with reminders of the road she was taking, whether she wanted to be on that road or not. There seemed to be babies everywhere; they were slung on backs and stomachs, held in arms and pushes in strollers. They all had always seemed to look the same to Cameron before, but not now – what features would they have of hers, and which of House’s?

It was like mixing up some kind of weird concoction and seeing how well it played at a party – except it would have a personality and hopes and dreams.

She wondered what her parents were thinking when they decided to put her on this Earth, and wondered if they realized how complicated it really was.

She remembered the time that House had asked her, “Who did you lose? Was it a baby?” and she had wanted to smack him in the face for being so callous, and at the same time had wanted to applaud that he asked the hard questions that no one else ever would, that he made her work in every possible way, even when she hated it.

“Cameron!” 

Cameron whipped her head around at the voice. For a moment, she didn’t see anything – maybe it had all been in her head. Maybe she was going crazy from the stress – it wouldn’t be unheard of, after all.

But then she heard something else; it was the steady clink of a cane against tile, and she sighed out. She was not ready to deal with House right now, but she seemed to be cornered so she had no choice.  
She took a deep breath and told herself that she would not fall into some stereotype; she would not “act emotional” or “make a scene”. Oh, how she hated those phrases. Ways to nail women into boxes for reacting to disasters the same way that men did, but if you were pregnant or on your period or whatever else, that was suddenly the full justification and the only reason – you were free to be ignored.

Not that House had ever been able to truly ignore her, at the end of the day.

She smiled and approached. He was tossing oranges into a basket that he was hanging off of his cane. Multi-tasking. That was House, after all.

“Hi, House.”

He looked up.

“Hey, Cameron.”

It was obviously that he was trying to look anywhere other than at her. That was to be expected, she figured. It was weird to accidentally run into the woman you got pregnant. 

“Need any help?” she inquired. He rolled his eyes.

“Yes, please help the cripple. The dying cripple,” he shot back.

“You know,” Cameron put a hand on her hip and stuck out her stomach a bit, as if reminding House of what she was doing for him – maybe she hadn’t figured this out yet, but she didn’t need to tell House that. She could act like she had it all together.

“Still knocked up, I see,” House commented.

“Is it that obvious?” Cameron rolled her eyes and took an orange out of House’s basket.

She smiled at him.

“What was that all about?” House asked her.

“I don’t know,” she mused, “Guess I’m just a crazy pregnant woman.” She tossed the orange up and caught it as she walked away.


	26. Week Twenty-One: Five O'Clock Guy

House had his eyes shut, and he may have been dreaming but wasn’t quite sure. He was laying back on the desk in his office, with his cane leaning against the side of the desk. 

It had been a surprisingly mellow day so far at Princeton-Plainsboro, maybe as some sort of test to see what trouble he would get into when left to his own devices and not given a task.

He was disappointed to find that he lacked the necessary energy for such shenanigans, as of the last week or so. He knew what that meant – that the bad things that were happening were progressing. 

But were they progressing faster than Cameron’s crazy miracle pregnancy? Probably. It was all going to end up being for nothing in the end, House was quite sure, but it was interesting to see the woman work, to try to piece out exactly what she seemed to be getting from this bizarre Hail Mary pass of an idea.

If this were anyone else, he would say that she had her own reasons for the whole plan and anything she might say otherwise was a way of deluding herself; that was human nature. But with Cameron, maybe it wasn’t all so clear. Sometimes she did things for reasons that didn’t entirely make sense at first glance. She had walked out on Chase and on House too, blaming House for it all – but now she was back. Normally, House would have blamed the whole thing on some failure Cameron must have run into back in Chicago – wasn’t that the only reason people went home again? 

Otherwise, they kept running until their feet fell out from under them. It wasn’t like House was going to go back home, even now. He wasn’t going to tell his parents (or his stepfather and mother, technically) about any of this.

They could find out from his obituary – what good would it be to tell them and let his mother come around and start sobbing? To let his father, such as he was, act like he cared when he never had for so many years? None of it was worth it. He wondered why he bothered to tell his patients that they were going to die at all – it would be more merciful to just have the grim reaper come and scoop you up out of nowhere and whisk you off to wherever.

Whatever the hell people wanted to believe in. 

What did Cameron believe in, really? She wasn’t waiting to get rewarded by some all-powerful somebody in the sky; she’d said she was an atheist… House hesitated to answer “too” to that sentence, quite sure that no one had perfected cynicism with the same exact panache as he did.

What was it about Cameron, or was it anything at all? Was he as bad as everyone accused him of being; did he use people for his own amusement to avoid getting close to them?

At the very least, he wouldn’t have to worry about it much longer. It would be as utterly meaningless as anything else in this utterly meaningless world, whether he ended up with some kind of unintended spawn coming into the mix or not. His mother would be happy, at least – hadn’t she been going on the other day about wanting to have grandchildren one day? 

Maybe she sensed that things were coming to an end, that things were coming to a beginning too. He’d been told that parents somehow had that sense, that it was some sort of evolutionary mechanism.

If he lived, would it could into play with his own… 

There was no point in thinking like that. Not now, not ever. 

It was weird to think of someone having a baby that looked like him, though. That was a thought that kept creeping into his mind, not with pride exactly but with an odd, experimental curiosity. Would this kid have his personality, too? Would he be a tiny cynic, walk with a tiny limp?

House rolled off the desk and let out an annoyed sigh. There was no use in wondering about things he wouldn’t be around for – it was like continually musing about what would happen the next time Halley’s Comet showed up. 

He’d have to find something to do. He couldn’t sit around here all day like a hamster running in a wheel.

But maybe, just like the hamster, he didn’t have much time left to figure it all out.

***

Cameron could remember being younger. Specifically, she could remember being a college kid and having some much wide-eyed idealism that people might think her eyes were about to fall out of her head.

She had been a different person then, but she didn’t know if that Cameron was better or worse than the one who was staring into the mirror now. 

Which one would be better for the baby? That as something she needed to start thinking about sooner rather than later. She had been able, at the beginning of this plan, to visualize this small being as a vessel, a means by which to reconcile everything about her and House that she hadn’t wanted to deal with.

But now… she let her hand travel down between her breasts, to rest on her stomach. Now, it all meant so much more, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that. 

She took a deep breath in and closed her eyes. 

She wanted to visualize herself out of all of this, on the other side of this thing, as if that could make it a reality. She had believed that once, that if she could see it and dream it, then she would be it. Those days were gone, and the reality felt harsher with each given day, and it seemed as if any move she could make was the wrong one.

She needed to talk to House, to get him to understand… but to understand what, though?

She walked back to her bed and collapsed down on it on her back. 

The dreams would come tonight, but what would they bring?


	27. Week Twenty-Two: In My Defense

House yawned. It was already a long day, and the day hadn’t even started – it wasn’t even six in the morning.

Maybe he should have thought about this before he decided to become a doctor, he mused. It wasn’t exactly a nine-to-five. Maybe he should have been a blacksmith or something like that. What did a blacksmith even do?

What, in fact, did House even do, these days at least? He sat around and mused over his failed life. It was depressing. 

A phone was ringing somewhere in the apartment, and House tried to decide whether he was motivated enough to try answering it. Who could it be? Was it Cameron, trying to get him to step up to the plate (or whatever her motivation was these days)? Was it Cuddy, come to tell him how he had screwed everything up all over again and that he should be grateful his dying ass wasn’t rotting in prison right now? Was it a case? 

Or maybe it was just a telemarketer. Or worse, his own doctor, giving him bad news. Even good news was bad news at this point. The fact that his doctor hadn’t had his own “House moment”, discovering a tiny clue to break open that House didn’t have leukemia at all, that he had something highly treatable that had simply gone unnoticed. House hated that in this moment he’d rather be wrong and alive than right and dead.

Or maybe it was the other way around. Recently, things had gotten so incredibly tiresome that House wondered what the point was anymore. If he couldn’t practice – if he got to the point where he really couldn’t practice this time – then what was the point of sticking around at all? 

He snorted slightly.

Maybe the reason was that he was about to have a kid. One of those great life-changers; didn’t people always write about it in the books like that? “My life was never the same after I had…” and then the name of their darling little brat.

Except, most of the time, people’s lives didn’t change. They were the same screwed up person before and after, except now they had a tiny person who would always be around for them to take it out on. To always blame. Their entire lives could have been different if they hadn’t made that particular mistake.

Of course, there were other people who needed to have that particular mistake, who yearned for it. People like Cuddy, who fell over themselves to adopt someone else’s mistake.

But why? What was it about forcing another generation to deal with one’s own crap that got them all warm and fuzzy? 

And what the hell was House going to do if Cameron expected him to be involved in this fiasco in some way beyond not-dying from it? And what if he did die – what was Cameron planning to do about it all then? Did she think they were going to ride off on a white horse together at the end of it all? That he was going to act like that doctor who went around the world trying to cure tuberculous?

She could keep dreaming. It wouldn’t change anything.

At the end of the day, after all, House was still House.

***

Foreman had a department to run, terminally ill House or no terminally ill House. 

There had been times in which he had gone to bed, hoping he would wake up and have this department – but now it wasn’t a dream but a complete nightmare.

The endless Cameron/Cuddy/House/Chase drama was more than enough for anyone, and even a teaspoon of it would have been too much for Foreman. Sure, there had been Thirteen – and Chase would have reminded him of that quickly enough if he’d started to actually complain about it. 

But this was above and beyond. It was like living in a soap opera. And unlike his mother, who had watched the damned things from dawn ‘til dusk every day she had off, Foreman despised soap operas.

House, of course, had always loved them. 

House also never had to put back together everything he regularly shattered into pieces – oh, he had a highly-trained staff of fellows to do that for him.

Maybe Foreman was being too hard on him. Maybe that came from the fact that the team continually complained about how he was trying to be House with the way he ran the department.

But someone had to run it, and why not run it in the way that had worked before? The only way that had ever worked? 

Without the drama, Foreman had always promised himself – without the drama. Just the results, served on a platter to keep Cuddy off their backs. 

He would take the reins long after everyone else had let the horses all run out of the damn barn, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it. It was bad enough that his mentor was sick – terminally sick, in fact – not that Foreman wanted to take the time to try and process exactly what that meant for him. 

He didn’t want to think about it, and he would not think about it. He would simply forge ahead, House or no House. He had never really needed House; hadn’t that been what he had always said?

After all, House had never needed anyone in his life – except for them. Why had he kept coming back to the same fellows, time after time?

Maybe it was some weird yearning for a family – Foreman guessed that he could get that. 

But just the same, didn’t every father know that one day their sons would surpass them? Wasn’t that what they were supposed to do, in fact? 

Except they weren’t supposed to die while the sons were climbing to the top. They were supposed to vacation down in Malibu sipping martinis and getting postcards from their sons.

Why was he thinking about House like he was Foreman’s father?

Foreman sighed. Maybe this would all be over with soon. Until then… there would always be work.


	28. Week Twenty-Three: I Need You (To Need Me)

Cameron called House one cold morning; there was frost on the windows and when she touched the walls she could picture herself freezing in liquid nitrogen, shattering if someone were to carelessly tap her shoulder accidentally.

“I’ll need you to come with me to the doctor’s.” It was a reasonable request to make, considering, but it was hard to say.   
House blinked. 

“You called me up at seven in the morning to tell me to go to a doctor’s? Sure… Which one. I mean, we work in a hospital, it isn’t as if we have any shortage of them around.” 

“I need an ultrasound. I don’t know if I want everyone at Princeton-Plainsboro knowing about this.” It was odd to say, considering that a week ago she would have said that she didn’t care. Maybe she just didn’t want to bend to what House wanted to do. She was giving up enough already, even though she had chosen this. 

She had to keep some kind of control in this situation. 

“Okay, sure, I’ll go.” She wasn’t sure what about it made House soften, but somehow, there he was.   
He arrived on her doorstep about ten minutes later, and he actually looked relatively presentable. Perhaps there was hope yet for him.

“Hey, House.” Cameron deflated slightly. She was so tired all the time, recently. Tired and cold and ready to be done with the whole thing – why wasn’t there a fast-forward button on this whole pregnancy thing, she wondered.

Maybe she should call home, talk to her own mother. 

Why hadn’t she thought of that before? They had a good relationship, didn’t they? So what stood in the way of asking for advice?

Then again, Cameron’s mother hadn’t been a doctor. She hadn’t even finished college, her father either. They hadn’t understood the things that Cameron had obsessed over, the challenges she had had to face. All of the worries, the tests, the 36 hour days.

They’d both been 9-to-5 people and had never wanted anything past that. 

Maybe that was why… and after all, she still wasn’t sure what her next move was, after the baby was born. Was she even going to keep this child, to raise him or her, have plans for them and pick out a name and a preschool and all of those sort of mundane things that always seemed more important than life itself to parents?

And what if the baby got sick one day – would she turn into one of the wailing parents at the hospital, completely lose her head and stop with her even-keeled compassion and instead just fall completely into disarray? Have a nervous breakdown?

What in the hell was she planning to tell this baby about House? “I decided to have you for my spare parts for my former boss?”

At least she wouldn’t have to do that one for another few years… right?

***

Cameron had done this on the other side of things for a long time. Rubbing gel on people, checking their baby’s progression – though with her it had usually been because the baby had something horribly wrong, or because the mother did. 

Now, she wondered if there wasn’t something horribly wrong here, if she wasn’t going to end up on the other side of the glass the way that Foreman had once. The doctor becomes the patient, she thought dryly. 

What was her plan if the worst did happen, anyway? Just go back and try it all over again? Have the kid anyway, hoping for some kind of a miracle cure? A miracle cure after the kid had already performed a miracle for this man Cameron… what did she feel about House, anyway? Was it love? Some kind of weird longing, perhaps, or obligation. Or maybe she was doing it just so she could tell herself that underneath everything else, she was and would remain a good person. 

Maybe she was just trying to fool herself in the biggest possible way. Maybe that was why she hadn’t told her parents. It wasn’t like she knew what she was doing.

At least this part, she did. 

“Please take a seat, Dr. Cameron. Let’s go over some questions, and then we can begin the ultrasound. I’m sure you’re eager to find out about your new little one!”

Cameron looked up at the doctor and gave a nod. She must look subdued or in shock; she couldn’t have been the first to look this way. 

“Let’s do it. What do you want to know?”

“And this is the baby’s father?”

Cameron gave a shrug.

“That’s him.”

“It’s nice to meet you, sir.”

House tapped his cane against the floor.

“We don’t have all day!” he declared. “Let’s see the little bugger before he starts off being a disappointment.”

It seemed, Cameron thought, that House’s upbringing must not have been the best. It was unlikely that she could rely on him to step up… and he would be healing, anyway. That would be the priority. As it should be. This was Cameron’s big idea. 

The doctor and ultrasound tech appeared less than charmed by House’s antics, but they did not say anything. 

Cameron closed her eyes. It was a helpless feeling, no longer being the expert in this moment. People hoped for great things from their children, but they seemed to so rarely get them. Either the children were disappointments, or the parents were.

Now, she was turning into House. She needed to stop.

Her eyes flew open again, and she tried not to think of how vulnerable this all made her feel, how much doubt kept flooding in every time she opened her mind to realize what she had committed to. This was huge, and she hadn’t seen it.

“Dr. Cameron?” the ultrasound tech asked. “Is everything all right? You look a little faint…”

She needed to snap out of it. Turning into the stereotypical hormonal, weepy woman in front of House would only serve to get her mocked.

“Do you want to know what you’re having?”

“A baby, presumably,” House cut in dryly, and the tech ignored him.

“…Sure.” It was scary; it made it all more real. But maybe it needed to be.

“You’re having a girl, Dr. Cameron.”


	29. Week Twenty-Four: Decisions, Decisions

Lisa Cuddy had never been one to show her emotions in public. Ever since she was a little girl growing up, she had kept it close to the vest. There wasn’t anything to be gained from making a big production about what she was feeling and getting every person involved.

That type of person never got what they wanted at the end of the day, and that type of person only made everyone around them feel uncomfortable for having better sense.

She saw Allison Cameron as that second type of person. Of course, Cameron was a good doctor – that much was clear. But a good administrator? That, she could never be. Too emotionally involved. 

Right now, however, the question wasn’t about being a good doctor or a good administrator or even a good person in general. The question was whether Cameron was a good person to be around Greg House. To “fix” him, if he could be fixed. 

Cuddy had certainly tried, and she had fallen short. 

She let out a long sigh as her phone rang. She reached forward and picked it up (wishing she could just ignore it, wishing she could just ignore a lot of things that wouldn’t stop yanking at her collar and trying to pull her back). 

She should have checked the caller ID first, but it wasn’t as if she could ever say no to a person in need – oh, she wished that she could, though. She wished she had never decided to become a doctor at a young age, had never set her sights on a career that was so intent upon taking up every single moment of her life. Wished she hadn’t wanted this before she had known enough to want other things like motherhood or peace and quiet or something that resembled happiness in some way, shape or form. Wished she didn’t need this. 

“Hey. It’s me.”

Cuddy let out a long sigh. Of all the people she wanted to talk to this morning, Cameron was very far down the list. But she had picked up the phone, and there wasn’t much that she could do about it now, was there?

“Hello, Dr. Cameron. What do you need?”

“I just… wanted to talk. I guess I wanted to kind of figure out what all of this means.”

Cuddy sighed. There she was, Allison Cameron with all of her feelings going all over the place. If she had asked Cuddy about this before she had done it, then she could have told her what a huge mistake it was. 

“I’m not really in the mood to have a chat with you over coffee, Dr. Cameron. I also don’t have time. I need to get to work.”

That wasn’t true, exactly – she didn’t need to leave for a little while, now. But the hospital never truly ran without her. If she stayed away too long, everything would fall apart. She did not have time or reason to listen to Cameron’s endless feelings about becoming mother to House’s child.

It should have been her instead, anyway. 

“You’re not in the mood, I know. I know that it’s complicated – and it makes sense. You don’t want to be involved in any of this… and you don’t have to. I just need your medical opinion.”

“About a case?”

“About me.”

Cuddy let out a long sigh. She wanted to hang up and climb into the car to drive to work. What did she care about any of this? She had her own family, her own child. A life without House that was perfect in every way. She had wanted more, once upon a time, but she had also seen that House didn’t have what it took. 

It wasn’t as if that was going to change for Cameron, whether she was having his kid or saving his life or not. So why did Cuddy feel something…. Something that she couldn’t quite put a finger on?

“What did you want to know? I’m not an ob-gyn, Cameron. I can refer you to a number of good ones, if you would like, but I would think that you’d have a lot of these resources available already… Why are you asking me? Cameron… You’re not getting doe-eyed just because you’re pregnant, are you? Because I don’t have time for that and I doubt House does either.”

“I’m not doe-eyed! What are you talking about? Maybe this was a mistake.”

“It might be, it might not be. But either way… Whatever it is you want… Just come over and tell me in person. I don’t think this whole… phone confessional… Situation is exactly working. But I have to get to work soon… So whatever you’re going to do… Just go ahead and do it, okay? Because I don’t have time to sit here and worry about it. Let’s just deal with it already.”

And that must have been how Cuddy ended up spending the rest of her morning looking at ultrasound photos with Allison Cameron and wondering why she didn’t just leave. Maybe the answer for getting rid of everything involving House was to pick up and start over from the bottom up in a completely different town. 

She could be a hospital administrator anywhere, after all – she was good at what she did. There were other hospitals that would treat her better; there were definitely other hospitals that needed her more. She could start Rachel over in a new, better school – she was young enough that she wouldn’t be leaving too many friends. Maybe now was the time. 

Just the same, she knew she would never do it. She couldn’t stop helping people; maybe that was the fatal flaw that would take her out one of these days.

“What do I do?” Cameron asked her. She was sitting cross-legged on Julia’s floor, and Julia would probably flip if she came home to discover this. Then again, Julia flipped about most things. Maybe it was a whole other reason to make sure that she kept this going.

“You keep your head up, Dr. Cameron. You stay… you.”

It fell short, and it fell flat. But it was the best advice Cuddy had for her right now, so it would have to do.

She held the ultrasound up to the light again, and simply wondered.


	30. Week Twenty-Five: One Step Closer

House considered reproduction – when one really thought about it, none of it made much sense at all. From an evolutionary perspective, he supposed it did – people had to make more people and cats had to make more cats and ladybugs needed to make more ladybugs. But people had been recommending that cats be spayed for quite some time now. 

Maybe people should be spayed, too, he mused. Maybe the entirety of human should just die out and then the aliens or whoever could come down and start over with whatever raw materials were left. 

Maybe he should just give up on all of this. He’d have already stuck Cameron with a kid, though, and now he had to be invested in one way or another. 

He had never thought of himself as someone who would be a father one day. He had tossed it around in his head when he had been dating Cuddy, of course. But there it was more separated; he could be a step-parent, which was a clear “step” away from any more commitment than just being a useful babysitter.

He and Wilson had done all right, that one time. He figured he could have replicated that success if necessary. 

But being an actual parent, where you had to care and be supportive and, worse, do all of the family get-togethers and ass-kissing your partner’s worst family members? That, he could not and would not do.

He was going to tell Cuddy that, he had been. But she hadn’t given him the chance to fail, and that wasn’t fair. She should have at least let him come to a standstill, to bow out when he realized that he could not be the man that she wanted or maybe needed.

She had made that decision before they had come to the necessary stalemate; she had made that decision completely alone.

And maybe that had been what had hurt the most, in all of it. 

And yet she had still stuck around to care. Maybe that was the worst – maybe it was, in its way, all the worst. One on top of another, cascading into space. 

Maybe he should cut and run, go back out again somewhere and ride off into the sunset – vanish. His way of telling everyone “thanks for caring, but no thanks.” Showing everyone that he wasn’t really worth caring about. 

Because he really wasn’t. He broke everything that he touched into a million pieces. He just give up. 

The Caribbean was going to be beautiful this time of year, wasn’t it? Why not just go out on a win, save everyone the trouble? Why not just be the person that he knew he had been all along? That was easier… 

But that wasn’t the way to survive. 

***

Chase paced his lonely apartment, all over again. He could feel traces of Cameron everywhere – in the walls and the bedroom, the chairs and the sound of the wind rustling the curtains. Had he, after all, managed to make all of his father’s mistakes? Had he chased away the only woman he had ever truly loved?

And now she was pregnant with another man’s child. Chase’s boss’ child. How was he supposed to cope with that, even if he could rush back in, in some kind of grand gesture to win her back? 

He hadn’t pictured himself as part of some kind of weird, patchwork family. He could remember how jealous he had been when he’d found out that Cameron still had her ex-husband’s sperm.

Well, this was so, so much worse. This was going to be a living, breathing, thinking being that had somehow been formed of Cameron and House. It would have to be some kind of anti-Christ, honestly. Maybe Chase should call out an exorcist to solve the issue. Or maybe he should exorcise himself, get rid of all the memories of Cameron and start all over again. He was a good-looking guy, it wasn’t like he couldn’t find a girl somewhere who would want to be with him; he was a doctor, it wasn’t as if he couldn’t find someone who was interested.

Even within Princeton-Plainsboro, there would be women who would want to be with him… Why was he still trying to hold on to Cameron, after all of this? 

Maybe he had to see her one more time, and then he would know what to do. Maybe that would be the answer. Something in his heart would know, and then he could stop wondering about it all. 

So he would go see her. He wouldn’t get sidetracked by all of this, he would just go see her and talk to her and figure everything out once and for all. There would be a deciding moment, and it would be a deciding moment with incidental music; it would be one that he couldn’t miss, even if he was as dense as House said he was sometimes.

House. How was he supposed to keep working for House, after all of this? Was it normal that he hadn’t walked out yet, or hadn’t strangled the man yet? Maybe Chase was everything they said he was. Maybe he was just a doormat that let people do whatever they wanted, just so that he could think that he was wanted. 

Or would it be taking the higher ground? Was his career the most important part of any of this? The good that he could do for the world? Would that make everything else worth it? (He wasn’t fully pure either, he reminded himself – he had done things, he had done a thing, he would have to take to his grave.) 

Maybe he should just call Cameron and talk to her about everything. Every last part of this whole sordid story. 

Maybe that was the answer. All he had to do was pick up the phone and dial.

He picked it up with his hands shaking, swallowing hard, running his hands through his hair. It was going to be hard; it was going to be impossible.

But he would have to talk to Cameron if he was ever going to live with himself ever again. If he was going to move on. 

Unless, of course, he didn’t want to move on at all.

He scrolled down to Cameron’s name and hit “Call”.


	31. Week Twenty-Six

Chase would lay things to rest with Cameron, and then he would be free to move on. He was going to meet with her, and then it would all be laid to rest. He could get back the Cameron shaped part of his heart and find someone else to fill it. Or maybe, it would be no one at all – maybe, Chase could enjoy being single and be the party boy people kept assuming him to be. 

Maybe he would find a nice little island to kick back on, the way House had when he had run off. Live the life, not worrying about anyone or anything – wasn’t that supposed to be what everyone wanted, at the end of the day?

Trying to be the best doctor, trying to really help people, it was exhausting. Half the people you never could help, and the other half didn’t want it. Had the years of medical school, trying to make his father proud of him in a fruitless search, had any of that even been worth it, or had he thrown his one and only life away? Even falling in love seemed, sometimes now, like a waste of time after all. 

Of course, he didn’t end up at an island at seven o’clock that morning; he walked into work with the same tired step he had been wearing through the floor for six years now. What if he just dissolved into the woodwork of the place, he wondered, what if he just stopped caring and let moss grow around him? Would anyone even notice?

Now was not the time for a mid-life crisis – but what better time to have one than when your ex-fiancée is having your boss’ baby?

“Not even her boss anymore, my boss,” he found himself telling Taub, who was hard at work running tests. “It’s all one big cosmic joke, I’m telling you.”

“It’s time to get over yourself. There’s actual medicine going on here, and all you’re concerned with is the never-ending House and Cameron drama. Do you get tired, looking at yourself in the mirror every day, or what?”

“What, I’m an Abercrombie and Fitch model now?”

“Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, as they say.”

“They don’t even say that!”

“Close enough for you to need to move on already – that’s what I’m getting at. Cameron is over. It’s done. Greener pastures await. For the good of all of us, because on behalf of the whole team, everyone is tired of listening to you complain about this.”

“I haven’t even complained about it at all!”

Taub tilted his head to the side and gave Chase a look that clearly said, “Yeah, right.”

“You don’t even need to say it out loud. It’s on your long face every time you walk in here, and your work is suffering for it.”

“How? I’m the same doctor as I always was.”

“Neither of you are. You aren’t, House isn’t, and Cameron doesn’t even work here anymore. And you’re pathetic, and House is pathetic, and Cuddy is pathetic, and we need to have a real ban on any of us dating anyone who works here.”

“Didn’t you just knock up a nurse or something?” Chase fired back at him.

“That is a thing that happened, yes, and that is why I feel there should be a ban. Has this actually worked out well for any of us? Does it ever – does anyone ever go, I’m glad I dated my co-worker, I couldn’t have found this level of devotion outside my workplace?”  
Chase made a snorting noise and took some glassware off the table. He’d just start running tests, he decided – he didn’t need to hear this lecture from Taub of all people. He had it sorted out, he knew he did.

If only there was a litmus test to determine how messed up your life was. 

***

Cameron examined herself in the mirror, finding herself more than a little self-conscious. That was the part she hadn’t expected in this whole situation. The clinical part was a breeze, it really was – the emotional part? That was a hell no one could know. It was as if she had been shoved into a blender, and the blender had been turned on.

For nine months.

Why had she talked herself into this? Why had she been pushed forward, driven by the desire to chew herself up and spit herself out for all eternity? 

Why couldn’t she have just stayed in Chicago? She could be married there, could be single and sitting in a lawn chair and soaking up the sun, forgetting the medical risks of such a thing (of everything, honestly), sipping a margarita. She was not going to be having any of those for quite a while, now. She let her eyes shut for a moment, picturing what could have been, the path not taken. Sliding doors, maybe.

But she had been the one to let them slide shut, not House, not anybody else. She had made the choice to start this crazy plan, and she would be the one to follow through on it. It was a crazy, stupid plan.

She had to smile at the fact that it had worked so far, though – the whole thing was working in some crazy kind of way, like one of House’s own plans really. He could have invented this as a crazy scheme and she would have told him that there was no way he could pull it off.

Then again, she had always believed in House, still believed in him. Why else buoy him back into life even after he himself had given up? Why dangle this life in front of him that he didn’t even want?

Maybe the world needed Dr. House more than Dr. House needed the world, and maybe Cameron needed House more than she needed a normal life. Maybe that was it, at the end of the day.

Who was she to make that calculation? Did she even have that right?

Maybe she was more life House than she knew.


End file.
